RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 



JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS' WORKS. 



THE RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

Part I.— THE AGE OF THE DESPOTS. 

Part n.-THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING.. 

Part III.— THE FINE ARTS. 

Part IV.— ITALIAN LITERATURE. 

2 vols., with portrait of the author. 

Part v.— THE CATHOLIC REACTION. 

2 vols. 

A SHORT HISTORY OF THE RENAIS- 
SANCE IN ITALY. Taken by Alfred 
Pearson from the larger work, i vol., 
i2mo, with portrait. 

ITALIAN BYWAYS. 121110. $1.75. 



RENAISSANCE IN ITALY 



THE AGE OF THE DESPOTS 



BY 



JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS 

AUTHOR OF 
'studies of the greek poets,' 'sketches in ITALY AND GREECE,' ETC. 



Di questi adunque oziosi principi, e di queste vilissime armi, sark piena la mia istoria' 

Mach. is^. Fior. lib. i. 




NEW YORK 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

I 






1 






« 7 



TO 
MY FRIEND 

JOHN BEDDOE, M.D., F.R.S., 

I DEDICATE MY WORK 

ON 

THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE. 



AUTHOR'S EDITION 



AUTHOR'S NOTE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION, 



Though these books taken together and in the 
order planned by the author form one connected 
study of Italian culture at a certain period of his- 
tory, still each aims at a completeness of its own, 
and each can be read independently of its com- 
panions. That the author does not regard acquaint- 
ance with any one of them as essential to a profit- 
able reading of any other has been shown by the 
publication of each with a separate title-page and 
without numeration of the volumes, while all three 
bear the same general heading of " Renaissance in 
Italy." 



PREFACE. 



This volume is the First Part of a work upon the 'Re- 
naissance in Italy.' The Second Part treats of the Revival 
of Learning. The Third, of the Fine Arts. The Fourth 
Part, in two volumes, is devoted to Italian Literature. 

Owing to the extent of the ground I have attempted to 
traverse, I feel conscious that the students of special de- 
partments will find much to be desired in my handling of 
each part. In some respects I hope that the several por- 
tions of the work may complete and illustrate each other. 
Many topics, for example, have been omitted from Chapter 
VIII. in this volume because they seemed better adapted 
to treatment in the future. 

One of the chief difficulties which the critic has to meet 
in dealing with the Italian Renaissance is the determination 
of the limits of the epoch. Two dates, 1453 and 1527, 
marking respectively the fall of Constantinople and the 
sack of Rome, are convenient for fixing in the mind that 
narrow space of time during which the Renaissance cul- 
minated. But in order to trace its progress up to this 
point, it is necessary to go back to a far more remote 
period; nor, again, is it possible to maintain strict chro- 
nological consistency in treating of the several branches of 
the whole theme. 



X PREFACE. 

The books of which the most frequent use has been 
made in this first portion of the work are Sismondi's * Re- 
publiques Italiennes '; Muratori's ' Rerum Italicarum Scrip- 
tores '; the ' Archivio Storico Italiano'; the seventh volume 
of Michelet's 'Histoire de France '; the seventh and eighth 
volumes of Gregorovius' ' Geschichte der Stadt Rom'; 
Ferrari's 'Rivoluzioni d' Italia'; Alberi's series of Des- 
patches; Gino Capponi's ' Storia della Repubblica di Fi- 
renze '; and Burckhardt's ' Cultur der Renaissance in Ital- 
ien.* To the last-named essay I must acknowledge especial 
obligations. It fell under my notice when I had planned, 
and in a great measure finished, my own work. But it 
would be difficult for me to exaggerate the profit I have 
derived from the comparison of my opinions with those of 
a writer so thorough in his learning and so delicate in his 
perceptions as Jacob Burckhardt, or the amount I owe to 
his acute and philosophical handling of the whole subject. 
I must also express a special debt to Ferrari, many of 
whose views I have adopted in the Chapter on ' Italian 
History.' With regard to the alterations introduced into 
the substance of the book in this edition, it will be enough 
to say that I have endeavored to bring each chapter up to 
the level of present knowledge. 

In conclusion, I once more ask indulgence for a volume 
which, though it aims at a completeness of its own, is pro- 
fessedly but one part of a long inquiry. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER L 

THE SPIRIT OF THE RENAISSANCE. 

Y/ pagb 

Difficulty of fixing Date — Meaning of Word Renaissance — The 
Emancipation of the Reason — Relation of Feudalism to the 

Renaissance— MedicBval Warnings of the Renaissance— Abe- 
lard, Bacon, Joachim of Flora, the Provengals, the Heretics, 
Frederick II. — Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio — Physical Energy 
of the Italians — The Revival of Learning— The Double Dis- 
covery of the World and of Man— rExploratidn of the Universe 

and of the Globe — jScience — The Fine Arts and Scholarship — _ 
Art Humanizes the Conceptions of the Church — Three Stages 
in the History of Scholarship— Jhe Age of Desire — The Age of , ._ 
Acquisition — The Legend of Julia s Corpse — The Age of the 
Printers and Critics — The Emancipation of the Conscience — 
Tne Reformation and the Modern Critical Spirit — Mechanical 
Inventions — The Place of Italy in the Renaissance . . I 

CHAPTER n. 

ITALIAN HISTORY. 

The special Difficulties of this Subject — Apparent Confusion — l/^ 
Want of leading Motive — The Papacy — The Empire — TheP^ 
Republics — The Despots — The People — The Dismemberment 
of Italy — Two main Topics — The Rise of the Communes — 
Gothic Kingdom — Lombards — Franks — Germans — The Bish- 
ops — The Consuls — The Podestks — Civil Wars — Despots — 
The Balance of Pov^^er — The Five Italian States — The Italians 
fail to achieve National Unity — The Causes of this Failure — 
Conditions under v^^hich it might have been achieved — A Re- 
public -A Kingdom — A Confederation — A Tyranny — The 
Part played by the Papacy • P 



xn CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER III. 

THE AGE OF THE DESPOTS. 

Lx-Salient Qualities of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries in Italy 
^^^^.,.—^— Relation of Italy to the Empire and to the Church — The II- 
le^'timate Title of Italian Potentates — The Free Emergence 
ot i'ersonality — Frederick II. and the Influence of Lis Exam- 
ple — Ezzelino da Romano — Six Sorts of Italian Despots — Feu- 
dal Seigneurs — Vicars of the Empire — Captains of the People 
— Condottieri — Nephews and Sons of Popes — Eminent Burgh- 
ers — Italian Incapacity for Self-government in Common- 
wealths — Forcible Tenure of Power encouraged Personal 
Ability — The Condition of the Despot's Life — Instances ot 
Domestic Crime in the Ruling Houses — Macaulay's Descrip- 
tion of the Italian Tyrant — Savonarola's and Matteo Villani's 
Descriptions of a Tyrant — The Absorption of Smaller by 
Greater Tyrannies in the Fourteenth Century — History of the 
Visconti — Francesco Sforza — The Part played in Italian Poli- 
tics by Military Leaders — Mercenary Warfare — Alberico da 
Barbiano, Braccio da Montone, Sforza Attendolo — History ot 
the Sforza Dynasty — The Murder of Galeazzo Maria Sforza — 
The Ethics of Tyrannicide in Italy — Relation of the Despots 
to Arts and Letters — Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta — Duke 
Federigo of Urbino — The School of Vittorino and the Court 
. of Urbino — The Cortegiano of Castiglione — The Ideals ot 
the Italian Courtier and the Modern Gentleman — General 
Retrospect 99 

CHAPTER IV. 

THE REPUBLICS. 

The different Physiognomies of the Italian Republics — The Sim- 
ilarity of their Character as Municipalities — The Rights of 
Citizenship — Causes of Disturbance in the Commonwealths — 
Belief in the Plasticity of Constitutions — Example of Genoa — 
Savonarola's Constitution — Machiavelli's Discourse to Leo X. 
— Complexity of Interests and Factions — Example of Siena — 
Small Size of Italian Cities — Mutual Mistrust and Jealousy of 
{/ the Commonwealths — The notable Exception of Venice — 
Constitution of Venice— Her wise System of Government- 
Contrast ol Florentine Vicissitudes — The Magistracies of 
Florence — Balia and Parlamento— The Arts of the Medici- 
Comparison of Venice and Florence in respect to Intellectual 
Activity and Mobility — Parallels between Greece and Italy — 



CONTENTS. xiii 

PAG> 

Essential Differences — The Mercantile Character of Italian 
Burghs— The 'Trattato del Governo della Famiglia *— The 
Bourgeois Tone of Florence, and the Ideal of a Burgher — 
Mercenary Arms 193 

CHAPTER V. 

THE FLORENTINE HISTORIANS. 

Florence, the City of Intelligence — Cupidity, Curiosity, and the 
Love of Beauty — Florentine Historical Literature — Philosoph- 
ical Study of History — Ricordano Malespini — Florentine His- 
tory compared with the Chronicles of other Italian Towns — 
The Villani— The Date 1300— Statistics— Dante's Political Es- 
says and Pamphlets — Dino Compagni — Latin Histories of 
Florence in Fifteenth Century — Lionardo Bruni and Poggio 
Bracciolini — The Historians of the First Half of the Sixteenth 
Century — Men of Action and Men of Letters: the Doctrinaires 
— Florence between 1494 and 1537 — Varchi, Segni, Nardi, 
Pitti, Nerli, Guicciardini — The Political Importance of these 
Writers — The Last Years of Florentine Independence, and 
the Siege of 1529 — State of Parties — Filippo Strozzi — Differ- 
ent Views of Florentine Weakness taken by the Historians — 
Their Literary Qualities — Francesco Guicciardini and Niccolo 
. Machiavelli— Scientific Statists — Discord between Life and 

^ Literature — The Biography of Guicciardini — His 'Istoria 
d'ltalia,* ' Dialogo del Reggimento di Firenze,' ' Storia Fioren- 
tina,' ' Ricordi ' — Biography of Machiavelli — His Scheme of a 
National Militia — Dedication of 'The Prince' — Political Ethics 
»^ — " of the Italian Renaissance — The ' Discorsi ' — The Seven Books 

on the Art of War and the • History of Florence/ . . . 246 

CHAPTER VI. 

*THE PRtVCE* OF MACHIAVELLI. 

The Sincerity of Machiavelli in this Essay — Machiavellism — His 
deliberate Formulation of a cynical political Theory — Analy- 
sis of • The Prince ' — Nine Conditions of Principalities — The 
Interest of the Conqueror acknowledged as the sole Motive of 
his Policy — Critique of Louis XII. — Feudal Monarchy and Ori- 
I ental Despotism — Three Ways of subduing a free City — Ex 
ample of Pisa — Principalities founded by Adventurers — Moses, 
Romulus, Cyrus, Theseus — Savonarola — Francesco Sforza — 
Cesare Borgia — Machiavelli's personal Relation to him — 
Machiavelli's Admiration of Cesare 's Genius — A Sketch of 



I 



CONTENTS. 



Cesare's Career — Concerning those who have attained to Sov- 
ereignty by Crimes — Oliverotto da Fermo— The Uses of Cru- 
elty — Messer Ramiro .d* Oreo — The pessimistic Morality of 
Machiavelli — On the Faith of Princes — Alexander VI. — The 
Policy of seeming virtuous and honest — Absence of chivalrous 
Feeling in Italy — The Military System of a powerful Prince — 
Criticism of Mercenaries and Auxiliaries — Necessity of Na- 
tional Militia — The Art of War — Patriotic Conclusion of the 
Treatise — Machiavelli and Savonarola 334 

CHAPTER VII. 

THE POPES OF THE RENAISSANCE. 

The Papacy between 1447 and 1527 — The Contradictions of the 
Renaissance Period exemplified by the Popes — Relaxation of 
their hold over the States of the Church and Rome during the 
Exile in Avignon — Nicholas V. — His Conception of a Papal 
Monarchy — Pius II. — The Crusade — Renaissance Pontiffs — 
Paul II. — Persecution of the Platonists — Sixtus IV. — Nepot- 
ism — The Families of Riario and Delia Rovere — Avarice — 
Love of Warfare — Pazzi Conspiracy — Inquisition in Spain — 
Innocent VIII. — Franceschetto Cibo — The Election of Alex- 
ander VI. — His Consolidation of the Temporal Power — Policy 
toward Colonna and Orsini Families — Venality of everything 
in Rome — Policy toward the Sultan — The Index — The Borgia 
Family — Lucrezia — Murder of Duke of Gandia — Cesare and 
his Advancement — The Death of Alexander — ^Julius II. — His 
violent Temper — Great Projects and commanding Character 
— Leo X. — His Inferiority to Julius — S. Peter's and the Refor- 
mation — Adrian VI. — His Hatred of Pagan Culture — Disgust 
of the Roman Court at his Election — Clement VII. — Sack of 
Rome — Enslavement of Florence 371 

CHAPTER VIIL 

THE CHURCH AND MORALITY. 

Corruption of the Church — Degradation and Division of Italy — 
Opinions of Machiavelli, Guicciardini, and King Ferdinand of 
Naples — Incapacity of the Italians for thorough Reformation 
— The Worldliness and Culture of the Renaissance — Witness 
of Italian Authors against the Papal Court and the Convents 
— Superstitious Respect for Relics — Separation between Re- 
ligion and Morality — Mixture of Contempt and Reverence for 
the Popes — Gianpaolo Baglioni — Religious Sentiments of the 



CONTENTS. X? 



Tyrannicides — Pietro Paolo Boscoli — Tenacity of Religions — 
The direct Interest of the Italians in Rome— Reverence for the 
Sacraments of the Church — Opinions pronounced by English- 
men on Italian Immorality — Bad Faith and Sensuality — The 
Element of the Fancy in Italian Vice — The Italians not Cruel, 
or Brutal, or Intemperate by Nature — Domestic Murders — 
Sense of Honor in Italy — Onore and Onestk — General Refine- 
ment — Good Qualities of the People — Religious Revivalism . 447 

CHAPTER IX. 

SAVONAROLA. 

rhe Attitude of Savonarola toward the Renaissance — His Parent- 
«*ge, Birth, and Childhood at Ferrara — His Poem on the Ruin 
of the World — ^Joins the Dominicans at Bologna — Letter to his 
Father — Poem on the Ruin of the Church — Begins to preach 
in 1482 — First Visit to Florence — San Gemignano — His Proph- 
ecy — Brescia in i486 — Personal Appearance and Style of Ora- 
tory — Effect on his audience — The three Conclusions — His 
Visions — Savonarola's Shortcomings as a patriotic Statesman 
—His sincere Belief in his prophetic Calling — Friendship with 
Pico della Mirandola — Settles in Florence, 1490 — Convent ot 
San Marco — Savonarola's Relation to Lorenzo de' Medici — 
The death of Lorenzo — Sermons of 1493 and 1494 — the Con- 
stitution of 1495 — Theocracy in Florence — Piagnoni, Bigi, 
and Arrabbiati — War between Savonarola and Alexander VI. 
— The Signory suspends him from preaching in the Duomo in 
1498— Attempts to call a Council— The Ordeal by Fire— San 
Marco stormed by the Mob — Trial and Execution of Sav- 
onarola . 497 

CHAPTER X. 

CHARLES VIIL 

f he Italian States confront the Great Nations of Europe — Policy 
of Louis XL of France— Character of Charles VIIL— Prep- 
arations for the Invasion of Italy — Position of Lodovico Sforza 
— Diplomatic Difficulties in Italy after the Death of Lorenzo 
de' Medici — Weakness of the Republics — II Moro — The year 
1494 — Alfonso of Naples — Inefficiency of the Allies to cope with 
France — Charles at Lyons is stirred up to the Invasion of Italy 
by Giuliano della Rovere — Charles at Asti and Pavia — Murder 
of Gian Galeazzo Sforza — Mistrust in the French Army — Ra- 
pallo and Fivizzano — The Entrance into Tuscany — Part played 



ivi CONTENTS. 



rAGi 
by Piero de* Medici — Charles at Pisa — His Entrance into Flor- 
ence — Piero Capponi — The March on Rome — Entry into Rome 
— Panicof Alexander VI. — The March on Naples — The Span- 
ish Dynasty: Alfonso and Ferdinand — Alfonso II. escapes to 
Sicily— Ferdinand II. takes Refuge in Ischia — Charles at Na- 
ples — The League against the French — De Comines at Venice 
-Charles makes his Retreat by Rome, Siena, Pisa, and Pon- 
tremoli — The Battle of Fomovo — Charles reaches Asti and 
returns to France — Italy becomes the Prize to be fought for 
by France, Spain, and Germany — Importance of the Expedi- 
tion of Charles VIII .537 



APPENDICES. 

No. I. — The Blood-madness of Tyrants 589 

No. II. — Translations of Nardi, ' Istorie di Firenze,' lib. i. cap. 4; 
and of Varchi, ' Storia Fiorentina,' lib. iii. caps. 20, 
21,22; lib. ix. caps. 48, 49, 46 592 

No. III. — The Character of Alexander VI., from Guicciardini's 

' Storia Fiorentina,' cap. 27 603 

No. IV. — Religious Revivals in Mediaeval Italy .... 606 

No. v.— The 'Sommario della Storia d' Italia dal 1511 al 1527, 

by Francesco Vettori 624 



RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE SPIRIT OF THE RENAISSANCE. 

Difficulty of fixing Date — Meaning of Word Renaissance — ^The 
Emancipation of the Reason — Relation of Feudalism to the 
Renaissance — Mediseval Warnings of the Renaissance — Abelard, 
Bacon, Joachim of Flora, the Provengals, the Heretics, Freder- 
ick II. — Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio — Physical Energy of the Ital- 
ians — The Revival of Learning — The Double Discovery of the 
World and of Man — Exploration of the Universe and of the Globe 
— Science — The Fine Arts and Scholarship^Art Humanizes the 
Conceptions of the Church — Three Stages in the History of Schol- 
arship — The Age of Desire — The Age of Acquisition — The Legend 
of Julia's Corpse — The Age of the Printers and Critics — The Eman- 
cipation of the Conscience — The Reformation ?nd the Modern 
Critical Spirit — Mechanical Inventions — ^The Place of Italy in the 
Renaissance. 

The word Renaissance has of late years received a 
more extended significance than that which is implied 
in our English equivalent — the Revival of Learning. 
We use it to denote the whole transition from the 
Middle Ages to the Modern World; and though it 
is possible to assign certain limits to the period during 
which this transition took place, we cannot fix on any 
dates so positively as to say — between this year and 
that the movement was accomplished. To do so 
would be like trying to name the days on which 
spring in any particular season began and ended 



I RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

Yet we speak of spring as different from winter and 
from summer. The truth is, that in many senses we 
are still in mid- Renaissance. The evolution has not 
been completed. The new life is our own and is pro- 
gressive. As in the transformation scene of some 
great Masque, so here the waning and the waxing 
shapes are mingled; the new forms, at first shadowy 
and filmy, gain upon the old; and now both blend; 
and now the old scene fades into the background; 
still, who shall say whether the new scene be finally 
set up? 

In like manner we cannot refer the whole pheno- 
mena of the Renaissance to any one cause or circum- 
stance, or limit them within the field of any one 
department of human knowledge. If we ask the 
students of art what they mean by the Renaissance, 
they will reply that it was the revolution effected in 
architecture, painting, and sculpture by the recovery 
of antique monuments. Students of literature, phi- 
losophy, and theology see in the Renaissance that dis- 
covery of manuscripts, that passion for antiquity, that 
progress in philology and criticism, which led to a cor- 
rect knowledge of the classics, to a fresh taste in po- 
etry, to new systems of thought, to more accurate an- 
alysis, and finally to the Lutheran schism and the 
emancipation of the conscience. Men of science will 
discourse about the discovery of the solar system by 
Copernicus and Galileo, the anatomy of Vesalius, and 
Harvey's theory of the circulation of the blood. The 
origination of a truly scientific method is the point 



MEANING OF THE WORD, 3 

which interests them most in the Renaissance. The 
political historian, again, has his own answer to the 
question. The extinction of feudalism, the develop- 
ment of the great nationalities of Europe, the growth 
of monarchy, the limitation of the ecclesiastical author- 
ity and the erection of the Papacy into an Italian king- 
dom, and in the last place the gradual emergence of 
that sense of popular freedom which exploded in the 
Revolution; these are the aspects of the movement 
which engross his attention. Jurists will describe the 
dissolution of legal fictions based upon the false decre- 
tals, the acquisition of a true text of the Roman Code, 
and the attempt to introduce a rational method into 
the theory of modern jurisprudence, as well as to com- 
mence the study of international law. Men whose at- 
tention has been turned to the history of discoveries and 
inventions will relate the exploration of America and 
the East, or will point to the benefits conferred upon 
the world by the arts of printing and engraving, by 
the compass and the telescope, by paper and by gun- 
powder; and will insist that at the moment of the Re- 
naissance all these instruments of mechanical utility 
started into existence, to aid the dissolution of what 
was rotten and must perish, to strengthen and perpet- 
uate the new and useful and life-giving. Yet neither 
any one of these answers taken separately, nor indeed 
all of them together, will offer a solution of the prob- 
lem. By the term Renaissance, or new birth, is m- 
dicated a natural movement, not to be explained by 
this or that characteristic, but to be accepted as an 



4 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

effort of humanity for which at length the time had 
come, and in the onward progress of which we still 
participate. The history of the Renaissance is not the 
history of arts, or of sciences, or of literature, or even 
of nations. It is the history of the attainment of self- 
conscious freedom by the human spirit manifested in 
the European races. It is no mere political mutation, 
no new fashion of art, no restoration of classical stand- 
ards of taste. The arts and the inventions, the knowl- 
edge and the books, which suddenly became vital at 
the time of the Renaissance, had long lain neglected 
on the shores of the Dead Sea which we call the Mid- 
dle Ages. It was not their discovery which caused 
the Renaissance. But it was the intellectual energy, 
the spontaneous outburst of intelligence, which en- 
abled mankind at that moment to make use of them. 
The force then generated still continues, vital and ex- 
pansive, in the spirit of the modern world. 

How was it, then, that at a certain period, about 
fourteen centuries after Christ, to speak roughly, the 
intellect of the Western races awoke as it were from 
slumber and began once more to be active .-^ Thai 
is a question which we can but imperfectly answer. 
The mystery of organic life defeats analysis; whether 
the subject of our inquiry be a germ-cell, or a phe- 
nomenon so complex as the commencement of a new 
religion, or the origination ot a new disease, or a new 
phase in civilization, it is alike impossible to do more 
than to state the conditions under which the fresh 
growth begins, and to point out what are its mani- 



FEUDALISM. 5 

festations. In doing so, moreover, we must be care- 
ful not to be carried away by words of our own mak- 
ing. Renaissance, Reformation, and Revolution are 
not separate things, capable of being isolated; they 
are moments in the history of the human race which 
we find it convenient to name; while history itself is 
one and continuous, so that our utmost endeavors to 
regard some portion of it independently of the rest 
will be defeated. 

A glance at the history of the preceding centuries 
shows that, after the dissolution of the fabric of the 
Roman Empire, there was no immediate possibility 
of any intellectual revival. The barbarous races 
which had deluged Europe had to absorb their bar- 
barism: the fragments of Roman civilization had 
either to be destroyed or assimilated: the Germanic 
nations had to receive culture and religion from the 
people they had superseded; the Church had to be 
created, and a new form given to the old idea of the 
Empire. It was further necessary that the modern 
nationalities should be defined, that the modern lan- 
guages should be formed, that peace should be se- 
cured to some extent, and wealth accumulated, be- 
fore the indispensable conditions for a resurrection of 
the free spirit of humanity could exist. The first na- 
tion which fulfilled these conditions was the first to 
inaugurate the new era. The reason why Italy took 
the lead in the Renaissance was, that Italy possessed 
a language, a favorable climate, political freedom, and 
commercial prosperity, at a time when other nations 



RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 



were still semi -barbarous. Where the human spirit 
had been buried in the decay of the Roman Empire, 
there it arose upon the ruins of that Empire; and the 
Papacy, called by Hobbes the ghost of the dead Ro- 
man Empire, seated, throned and crowned, upon the 
ashes thereof, to some extent bridged over the gulf 
between the two periods. 

Keeping steadily in sight the truth that the real 
quality of the Renaissance was intellectual, that it was 
the emancipation of the reason for the modern world, 
we may inquire how feudalism was related to it. The 
mental condition of the Middle Ages was one of ig- 
norant prostration before the idols of the Church — 
dogma and authority and scholasticism. Again, the 
nations of Europe during these centuries were bound 
down by the brute weight of material necessities. 
Without the power over the outer world which the 
physical sciences and useful arts communicate, with- 
out the ease of life which wealth and plenty secure, 
without the traditions of a civilized past, emerging 
slowly from a state of utter rawness, each nation 
could barely do more than gain and keep a diffi- 
cult hold upon existence. To depreciate the work 
achieved during the Middle Ages would be ridicu- 
lous. Yet we may point out that it was done uncon- 
sciously — that it was a gradual and instinctive pro- 
cess of becoming. The reason, in one word, was not 
awake; the mind of man was ignorant of its own 
treasures and its own capacities. It is pathetic to 
^hink of the mediaeval students poring over a single 



MENTAL STATE OF MIDDLE AGES, 7 

ill-translated sentence of Porphyry, endeavoring to 
extract from its clauses whole systems of logical 
science, and torturing their brains about puzzles 
hardly less idle than the dilemma of Buridan's don- 
key, while all the time, at Constantinople and at 
Seville, in Greek and Arabic, Plato and Aristotle 
were alive but sleeping, awaiting only the call of 
the Renaissance to bid them speak with voice in- 
telligible to the modern mind. It is no less pa- 
thetic to watch tide after tide of the ocean of hu- 
manity sweeping from all parts of Europe, to break 
in passionate but unavailing foam upon the shores 
of Palestine, whole nations laying life down for the 
chance of seeing the walls of Jerusalem, worshiping 
the sepulcher whence Christ had risen, loading their 
fleet with relics and with cargoes of the sacred earth, 
while all the time within their breasts and brains 
the spirit of the Lord was with them, living but un- 
recognized, the spirit of freedom which erelong was 
destined to restore its birthright to the world. 

Meanwhile the middle age accomplished its own 
work. Slowly and obscurely, amid stupidity and 
ignorance, were being forged the nations and the 
languages of Europe. Italy, France, Spain, England, 
Germany took shape. The actors of the future dra- 
ma acquired their several characters, and formed the 
tongues whereby their personalities should be ex 
pressed. The qualities which render modern soci- 
ety different from that of the ancient world, were 
being impressed upon these nations by Christianity, 



B RENA2i,SANCE IN ITALY, 

by the Church, by chivalry, by feudal customs. Then 
came a further phase. After the nations had been 
molded, their monarchies and dynasties were estab- 
lished. Feudalism passed by slow degrees into va- 
rious forms of more or less defined autocracy. In 
Italy and Germany numerous principalities sprang into 
pre-eminence; and though the nation was not united 
under one head, the monarchical principle was ac- 
knowledged. France and Spain submitted to a des- 
potism, by right of which the king could say, * L'Etat 
c'est moi.' England developed her complicated con- 
stitution of popular right and royal prerogative. At 
the same time the Latin Church underwent a similar 
process of transformation. The Papacy became more 
autocratic. Like the king, the Pope began to say, 
* L'Eglise c'est moi.' This merging of the mediaeval 
State and mediaeval Church in the personal suprem- 
acy of King and Pope may be termed the special 
feature of the last age of feudalism which preceded 
the Renaissance. It was thus that the necessary con- 
ditions and external circumstances were prepared. 
The organization of the five great nations, and the 
leveling of political and spiritual interests under po- 
litical and spiritual despots, formed the prelude to 
that drama of liberty of which the Renaissance was 
the first act, the Reformation the second, the Revo- 
lution the third, and which we nations of the present 
are still evolving in the establishment of the demo- 
cratic idea. 

Meanwhile, it must not be imagmed that the 



PROPHECIES OF THE REVIVAL, 9 

Renaissance burst suddenly upon the world in the fif- 
teenth century without premonitory symptoms. Far 
from that: within the middle age itself, over and over 
again, the reason strove to break loose from its fet- 
ters. Abelard, in the twelfth century, tried to prove 
1 hat the interminable dispute about entities and words 
was founded on a misapprehension. Roger Bacon, at 
the beginning of the thirteenth century, anticipated 
modern science, and proclaimed that man, by use of 
nature, can do all things. Joachim of Flora, inter- 
mediate between the two, drank one drop of the cup 
of prophecy offered to his lips, and cried that 'the 
Gospel of the Father was past, the Gospel of the Son 
was passing, the Gospel of the Spirit was to be.' 
These three men, each in his own way, the French- 
man as a logician, the Englishman as an analyst, the 
Italian as a mystic, divined the future but inevitable 
emancipation of the reason of mankind. Nor were 
there wanting signs, especially in Provence, that 
Aphrodite and Phoebus and the Graces were ready to 
resume their sway. The premature civilization of that 
favored region, so cruelly extinguished by the Church, 
was itself a reaction of nature against the restrictions 
imposed by ecclesiastical discipline; while the songs 
of the wandering students, known under the title 
of Carmina Burana, indicate a revival of Pagan or 
pre-Christian feeling in the very stronghold of medi- 
aeval learning. We have, moreover, to remember the 
Cathari, the Paterini, the Fraticelli, the Albigenses, 
the Hussites — heretics in whom the new light dimly 



10 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

shone, but who were instantly exterminated by the 
Church. We have to commemorate the vast con- 
ception of the Erriperor Frederick II., who strove to 
found a new society of humane culture in the South 
of Europe, and to anticipate the advent of the spirit 
cf modern tolerance. He, too, and all his race were 
exterminated by the Papal jealousy. Truly we may 
say with Michelet that the Sibyl of the Renaissance 
kept offering her books in vain to feudal Europe. 
In vain because the time was not yet. The ideas 
projected thus early on the modern world were im- 
mature and abortive, like those headless trunks and 
zoophitic members of half-molded humanity which, 
in the vision of Empedocles, preceded the birth 
of full-formed man. The nations were not ready. 
Franciscans imprisoning Roger Bacon for venturing 
to examine what God had meant to keep secret; Do- 
Minlcans preaching crusades against the cultivated 
nobles of Toulouse; Popes stamping out the seed of 
enlightened Frederick; Benedictines erasing the mas- 
terpieces of classical literature to make way for their 
own litanies and lurries, or selling pieces of the parch- 
ment for charms; a laity devoted by superstition to 
saints and by sorcery to the devil; a clergy sunk 'O 
sensual sloth or fevered with demoniac zeal: thes( 
still ruled the intellectual destinies of Europe. There 
fore the first anticipations of the Renaissance were 
fragmentary and sterile. 

Then came a second period. Dante's poem, a 
work of conscious art, conceived in a modern spirit 



THE MEN- OF THE NEW AGE, II 

and written in a modern tongue, was the first true sign 
that Italy, the leader of the nations of the West, had 
shaken off her sleep. Petrarch followed. His ideal 
of antique culture as the everlasting solace and the 
universal education of the human race, his lifelong 
effort to recover the classical harmony of thought and 
speech, gave a direct impulse to one of the chief 
movements of the Renaissance — its passionate out- 
going toward the ancient world. After Petrarch, 
Boccaccio opened yet another channel for the stream 
of freedom. His conception of human existence as 
joy to be accepted with thanksgiving, not as a gloomy 
error to be rectified by suffering, familiarized the four- 
teenth century with that form of semi-pagan gladness 
which marked the real Renaissance. 

In Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio Italy recov- 
ered the consciousness of intellectual liberty. What 
we call the Renaissance had not yet arrived; but 
their achievement rendered its appearance in due 
season certain. With Dante the genius of the mod- 
ern world dared to stand alone and to create confi- 
dently after its own fashion. With Petrarch the same 
genius reached forth across the gulf of darkness, re- 
suming the tradition of a splendid past. With Boc- 
caccio the same genius proclaimed the beauty of the 
world, the goodliness of youth and strength and love 
and life, unterrified by hell, unappalled by the shadow 
of impending death. 

It was now, at the beginning of the fourteenth 
century, when Italy had lost indeed the heroic spirit 



I a RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

which we admire in her Communes of the thirteenth, 
but had gained instead ease, wealth, magnificence, 
and that repose which springs fi-om long prosperity, 
that the new age at last began. Europe was, as it 
were, a fallow field, beneath which lay buried the civ- 
ilization of the old world. Behind stretched the cen- 
turies of mediae valism, intellectually barren and inert. 
Of the future there were as yet but faint foreshadow- 
ings. Meanwhile, the force of the nations who were 
destined to achieve the coming transformation was 
unexhausted; their physical and mental faculties were 
unimpaired. No ages of enervating luxury, of intel- 
lectual endeavor, of life artificially preserved or in- 
geniously prolonged, had sapped the fiber of the 
men who were about to inaugurate the modem world. 
Severely nurtured, unused to delicate living, these 
giants of the Renaissance were like boys in then 
capacity for endurance, their inordinate appetite for 
enjoyment. No generations, hungry, sickly, effete, 
critical, disillusioned, trod them down. Ennui and 
the fatigue that springs from skepticism, the despair 
of thwarted effort, were unknown. Their fresh and 
unperverted senses rendered them keenly alive to 
what was beautiful and natural. They yearned for 
magnificence, and instinctively comprehended splen- 
dor. At the same time the period of satiety was 
still far off. Everything seemed possible to their 
young energy ; nor had a single pleasure palled 
upon their appetite. Born, as it were, at the mo- 
ment when desires and faculties are evenly balanced. 



INTELLECTUAL EMANCLPATION. 1 3 

wher the perceptions are not blunted nor the senses 
cloyed, opening their eyes for the first time on a 
world of wonder, these men of the Renaissance 
enjoyed what we may term the first transcendent 
springtide of the modern world. Nothing is more 
remarkable than the fullness of the life that throbbed 
in them. Natures rich in all capacities and endowed 
with every kind of sensibility were frequent. Nor 
was there any limit to the play of personality in 
action. We may apply to them what Mr. Brown- 
ing has written of Bordello's temperament: — 

A footfall there 
Suffices to upturn to the warm air 
Half germinating spices, mere decay 
Produces richer life, and day by day 
New pollen on the lily-petal grows. 
And still more labyrinthine buds the rose. 

During the Middle Ages man had lived enveloped 
in a cowl. He had not seen the beauty of the world, 
or had seen it only to cross himself, and turn aside 
and tell his beads and pray. Like S. Bernard trav- 
eling along the shores of the Lake Leman, and no- 
ticing neither the azure of the waters, nor the luxuri- 
ance of the vines, nor the radiance of the mountains 
with their robe of sun and snow, but bending a 
thought-burdened forehead over the neck of his 
mule; even like this monk, humanity had passed, 
a careful pilgrim, intent on the terrors of sin, death, 
and judgment, along the highways of the world, and 
had scarcely known that they were sightworthy, or 
that life is a blessin^r. Beauty i? a snare, pleasure a 



14 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

Sin, the world a fleeting show, man fallen and lost, 
death the only certainty, judgment inevitable, hell 
everlasting, heaven hard to win; ignorance is ac- 
ceptable to God as a proof of faith and submission; 
abstinence and mortification are the only safe rules 
of life : these were the fixed ideas of the ascetic 
mediaeval Church. The Renaissance shattered and 
destroyed them, rending the thick veil which they 
had drawn between the mind of man and the outer 
world, and flashing the light of reality upon the dark- 
ened places of his own nature. For the mystic teach- 
ing of the Church was substituted culture in the 
classical humanities; a new ideal was established, 
whereby man strove to make himself the monarch 
of the globe on which it is his privilege as well as 
destiny to live. The Renaissance was the liberation 
of the reason from a dungeon, the double discovery 
of the outer and the inner world. 

An external event determined the direction whicl 
this outburst of the spirit of freedom should take. 
This was the contact of the modern with the ancient 
mind which followed upon what is called the Revival 
of Learning. The fall of the Greek Empire in 1453, 
while it signalized the extinction of the old order, 
gave an impulse to the now accumulated forces o^ 
the new. A belief in the identity of the human 
spirit under all previous manifestations and in its 
aninterrupted continuity was generated. Men found 
that in classical as well as Biblical antiquity existed 
an ideal of human life, both moral and intellectual. 



DISCOVERY OF THE WORLD. 1 5 

by which they might profit in the present. The 
modern genius felt confidence in its own energies 
when it learned what the ancients had achieved. 
The guesses of the ancients stimulated the exertions 
of the moderns. The whole world's history seemed 
once more to be one. 

The great achievements of the Renaissance were 
the discovery of the world and the discovery of man.* 
Under these two formulae may be classified all the 
phenomena which properly belong to this period. 
The discovery of the world divides itself into two 
branches — the exploration of the globe, and that 
systematic exploration of the universe which is in 
fact what we call Science. Columbus made knowrx 
America in 1492; the Portuguese rounded the Cape 
in 1497; Copernicus explained the solar system in 
1 507. It is not necessary to add anything to this 
plain statement; for, in contact with facts of such 
momentous import, to avoid what seems like com- 
monplace reflection would be difficult. Yet it is 
only when we contrast the ten centuries which pre- 
ceded these dates with the four centuries which have 
ensued, that we can estimate the magnitude of that 
Renaissance movement by means of which a new 
hemisphere has been added to civilization. In like 
manner, it is worth while to pause a moment and 
consider what is implied in the substitution of the 
Copernican for the Ptolemaic system. The world, 

• It is to Michelet that we owe these formulae, which have passed 
into the language of history. 



l6 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

regarded in old times as the center of all things, the 
apple of God's eye, for the sake of which were cre- 
ated sun and moon and stars, suddenly was found to 
be one of the many balls that roll round a giant 
sphere of light and heat, which is itself but one 
among innumerable suns attended each by a cortege 
of planets, and scattered, how we know not, through 
infinity. What has become of that brazen seat of the 
old gods, that Paradise to which an ascending Deity 
might be caught up through clouds, and hidden for 
a moment from the eyes of his disciples. The dem- 
onstration of the simplest truths of astronomy de- 
stroyed at a blow the legends that were most signifi- 
cant to the early Christians by annihilating theii 
symbolism. Well might the Church persecute Ga 
lileo for his proof of the world's mobility. Instinct- 
ively she perceived that in this one proposition was 
involved the principle of hostility to her most cher- 
ished conceptions, to the very core of her mythology. 
Science was born, and the warfare between scientific 
positivism and religious metaphysic was declared. 
Henceforth God could not be worshiped under the 
forms and idols of a sacerdotal fancy; a new meaning 
had been given to the words: ' God is a Spirit, and 
they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit 
and in truth.' jThe reason of man was at last able to 
study the scheme of the universe, of which he is a 
part, and to ascertain the actual laws by which it is 
governed. Three centuries and a half have elapsed 
since Copernicus revolutionized astronomy. It is 



DISCOVERY OF MAN. 1 7 

only by reflecting on the mass of knowledge we 
have since acquired, knowledge not only infinitely 
curious but also incalculably useful in its application 
to the arts of life, and then considering how much 
ground of this kind was acquired in the ten centuries 
which preceded the Renaissance, that we are at all 
able to estimate the expansive force which was then 
generated. Science, rescued from the hand of astrol- 
ogy, geomancy, alchemy, began her real life with the 
Renaissance. Since then, as far as to the present 
moment she has never ceased to grow. Progressive 
and durable, Science may be called the first-born of 
the spirit of the modern world. 

Thus by the discovery of the world is meant on 
the one hand the appropriation by civilized humanity 
of all corners of the habitable globe, and on the other 
the conquest by Science of all that we how know 
about the nature of the universe. In the discovery 
of man, again, it is possible to trace a twofold process. 
Man in his temporal relations, illustrated by Pagan 
antiquity, and man in his spiritual relations, illustrated 
by Biblical antiquity; these are the two regions, at first 
apparently distinct, afterwards found to be interpene- 
trative, which the critical and inquisitive genius of the 
Renaissance opened for investigation. In the former 
01 these regions we find two agencies at work, art and 
scholarship. During the Middle Ages the plastic arts, 
like philosophy, had degenerated into barren and 
meaningless scholasticism — a frigid reproduction of 
lifeless forms copied technically and without inspira- 



1 8 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

tion from debased patterns. Pictures became sym- 
bolically connected with the religious feelings of the 
people, formulae from which to deviate would be im- 
pious in the artist and confusing to the worshiper. 
Superstitious reverence bound the painter to copy the 
almond eyes and stiff joints of the saints whom he had 
adored from infancy; and, even had it been otherwise, 
he lacked the skill to imitate the natural forms he saw 
around him. But with the dawning of the Renaissance 
a new spirit in the arts arose. Men began to conceive 
that the human body is noble in itself and worthy of 
patient study. The object of the artist then became 
to unite devotional feeling and respect for the sacred 
legend with the utmost beauty and the utmost fidelity 
of delineation. He studied from the nude; he drew 
the body in every posture; he composed drapery, in- 
vented attitudes, and adapted the action of his figures 
and the expression of his faces to the subject he had 
chosen. In a word, he humanized the altar-pieces 
and the cloister-frescoes upon which he worked. In 
this way the painters rose above the ancient symbols, 
and brought heaven down to earth. By drawing 
Madonna and her son like living human beings, by 
dramatizing the Christian history, they silently substi- 
tuted the love of beauty and the interests of actual life 
for the principles of the Church. The saint or angel 
became an occasion for the display of physical perfec- 
tion, and to introduce * un bel corpo ignudo ' into the 
composition was of more moment to them than to 
represent the macerations of the Magdalen. Men 



ART AND CHURCH DOGMA. I9 

thus learned to look beyond the relique and the host, 
and to forget the dogma in the lovely forms which 
gave it expression. Finally, when the classics came 
to aid this work of progress, a new world of thought 
and fancy, divinely charming, wholly human, was re- 
vealed to their astonished eyes. Thus art, which had 
begun by humanizing the legends of the Church, di- 
verted the attention of its students from the legend to 
the work of beauty, and lastly, severing itself from the 
religious tradition, became the exponent of the maj- 
esty and splendor of the human body. This final 
emancipation of art from ecclesiastical trammels cul- 
minated in the great age of Italian painting. Gazing 
at Michael Angelo's prophets in the Sistine Chapel, 
we are indeed in contact with ideas originally relig- 
ious. But the treatment of these ideas is purely, 
broadly human, on a level with that of the sculpture 
of Pheidias. Titian's Virgin received into Heaven, 
soaring midway between the archangel who descends 
to crown her and the apostles who yearn to follow 
her, is far less a Madonna Assunta than the apo- 
theosis of humanity conceived as a radiant mother 
Throughout the picture there is nothing ascetic, noth- 
ing mystic, nothing devotional. Nor did the art of 
the Renaissance stop here. It went further, and 
plunged into Paganism. Sculptors and painters com- 
bined with architects to cut the arts loose from their 
connection with the Church by introducing a spirit 
and a sentiment alien to Christianity. 

Through the instrumentalitv of art, and of all the 



20 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

ideas which art introduced into daily life, the Renais- 
sance wrought for the modern world a real resurrec- 
tion of the body, which, since the destruction of an- 
tique civilization, had lain swathed up in hair-shirts 
and cerements within the tomb of the mediaeval clois- 
ter. It was scholarship which revealed to men the 
wealth of their own minds, the dignity of human 
thought, the value of human speculation, the im- 
portance of human life regarded as a thing apart 
from religious rules and dogmas. During the Mid- 
dle Ages a few students had possessed the poems 
of Virgil and the prose of Boethius — ^and Virgil at 
Mantua, Boethius at Pavia, had actually been hon- 
ored as saints — together with fragments of Lucan, 
Ovid, Statius, Juvenal, Cicero, and Horace. The 
Renaissance opened to the whole reading public 
the treasure-houses of Greek and Latin literature. 
At the same time the Bible in its original tongues 
was rediscovered. Mines of Oriental learning were 
laid bare for the students of the Jewish and Arabic 
ti editions. The Aryan and Semitic revelations were 
for the first time subjected to something like a crit- 
ical comparison. With unerring instinct the men of 
the Renaissance named the voluminous subject-mat- 
ter of scholarship * Litterae Humaniores,' — the more 
human literature, or the literature that humanizes. 

There are three stages in the history of scholar- 
ship during the Renaissance. The first is the age of 
passionate desire; Petrarch poring over a Homer he 
could not understand, and Boccaccio in his maturity 



SCHOLARSHIP DURING THE RENAISSANCE, 21 

learning Greek, In order that he might drink from the 
well-head of poetic inspiration, are the heroes of this 
period. They inspired the Italians with a thirst for 
antique culture. Next comes the age of acquisition 
and of libraries. Nicholas V., who founded the Vati- 
can Library in 1453, Cosimo de Medici, who began 
the Medicean Collection a little earlier, and Poggio *^ 
Bracciolini, who ransacked all the cities and convents / 
of Europe for manuscripts, together with the teachers 
of Greek, who in the first half of the fifteenth century 
escaped from Constantinople with precious freights of 
classic literature, are the heroes of this second period. 
It was an age of accumulation, of uncritical and indis- 
criminate enthusiasm. Manuscripts were worshiped 
by these men, just as the reliques of Holy Land had 
been adored by their great-grandfathers. The eager- 
ness of the Crusades was revived in this quest of the \ \ 
Holy Grail of ancient knowledge. Waifs and strays 
of Pagan authors were valued like precious gems, rev- 
eled in like odoriferous and gorgeous flowers, con- 
sulted like oracles of God, gazed on like the eyes of a 
beloved mistress. The good, the bad, and the indif- 
ferent received an almost equal homage. Criticism 
had not yet begun. The world was bent on gather- 
ing up its treasures, frantically bewailing the lost 
books of Livy, the lost songs of Sappho — absorbing 
to intoxication the strong wine of multitudinous 
thoughts and passions that kept pouring from those 
long-buried amphorae of inspiration. What is most 
remarkable about this age of scholarship is the enthu- 



22 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

siasm which pervaded all classes in Italy for antique 
culture. Popes and princes, captains of adventure 
and peasants, noble ladies and the leaders of the 
demi-monde, alike became scholars. There is a 
story told by Infessura which Illustrates the temper 
of the times with singular felicity. On the i8th of 
April 1485 a report circulated in Rome that some 
Lombard workmen had discovered a Roman sar- 
cophagus while digging on the Applan Way. It 
was a marble tomb, engraved with the inscription, 
* Julia, Daughter of Claudius,' and inside the coffer 
lay the body of a most beautiful girl of fifteen years, 
preserved by precious unguents from corruption and 
the injury of time. The bloom of youth was still 
upon her cheeks and lips; her eyes and mouth were 
half open; her long hair floated round her shoulders. 
She was Instantly removed, so goes the legend, to 
the Capitol; and then began a procession of pilgrims 
from all the quarters of Rome to gaze upon this saint 
of the old Pagan world. In the eyes of those enthu- 
siastic worshipers, her beauty was beyond imagina- 
tion or description: she was far fairer than any wo- 
man of the modern age could hope to be. At last 
Innocent VIII. feared lest the orthodox faith should 
suffer by this new cult of a heathen corpse. Julia 
was buried secretly and at night by his direction, and 
naught remained In the Capitol but her empty mar- 
ble coffin. The tale, as told by Infessura, is repeated 
in Matarazzo and in Nantiporto with slight variations. 
One says that the girl's hair was yellow, another that 



THE CORPSE OF JULIA. 23 

it was of the glossiest black. What foundation for 
the legend may really have existed need not here be 
questioned. Let us rather use the mythus as a par- 
able of the ecstatic devotion which prompted the 
men of that age to discover a form of unimaginable 
beauty in the tomb of the classic world.^ 

Then came the third age of scholarship — the age 
of the critics, phllologers, and printers. What had 
been collected by Poggio and Aurlspa had now to 
be explained by Ficino, Poliziano, and Erasmus. 
They began their task by digesting and arranging 
the contents of the libraries. There were then no 
short cuts to learning, no comprehensive lexicons, 
no dictionaries of antiquities, no carefully prepared 
thesauri of mythology and history. Each student 
had to hold in his brain the whole mass of classical 
erudition. The text and the canon of Homer, Plato, 
Aristotle, and the tragedians had to be decided. 
Greek type had to be struck. Florence, Venice, 
Basle, Lyons, and Paris groaned with printing- 
presses. The Aldi, the StephanI, and Froben tolled 
by night and day, employing scores of scholars, men 
of supreme devotion and of mighty brain, whose 
work It was to ascertain the right reading of sen- 
tences, to accentuate, to punctuate, to commit to 

' The most remarkable document regarding the body of Julia 
which has yet been published is a Latin letter, written by Bartholo- 
maeus Fontius to his friend Franciscus Saxethus, minutely describ- 
ing her, with details which appear to prove that he had not only seen 
but handled the corpse. It is printed in Janilschek, Z^zV Gesellschafi 
der R, in It.: Stuttgart, 1879, P- ^-°- 



24 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

the press, and to place beyond the reach of monk 
ish hatred or of envious time that everlasting solace 
of humanity which exists in the classics. All sub- 
sequent achievements in the field of scholarship sink 
into insignificance beside the labors of these men, 
who needed genius, enthusiasm, and the sympathy 
of Europe for the accomplishment of their titanic 
task. Virgil was printed in 1470, Homer in 1488, 
Aristotle in 1498, Plato in i5i3. They then be- 
came the inalienable heritage of mankind. But what 
vigils, what anxious expenditure of thought, what 
agonies of doubt and expectation, were endured by 
those heroes of humanizing scholarship, whom we 
are apt to think of merely as pedants ! Which of 
us now warms and thrills with emotion at hear- 
ing the name of Aldus Manutius, or of Henricus 
Stephanus, or of Johannes Froben ? Yet this we 
surely ought to do ; for to them we owe in a great 
measure the freedom of our spirit, our stores of 
intellectual enjoyment, our command of the past, 
our certainty of the future of human culture. 

This third age in the history of the Renaissance 
Scholarship may be said to have reached its climax 
in Erasmus; for by this time Italy had handed on 
the torch of learning to the northern nations. The 
publication of his ''Adagia" in i5cK), marks the ad- 
vent of a more critical and selective spirit, which 
from that date onward has been gradually gaining 
strength in the modern mind. Criticism, in the true 
sense of accurate testinc: and siftinor, is one of the 



CRITICAL AND SELECTIVE SPIRIT. 25 

points which distinguish the moderns from the an- 
cients; and criticism was developed by the process 
of assimilation, comparison, and appropriation, which 
was necessary in the growth of scholarship. The ul- 
timate effect of this recovery of classic literature was, 
once and for all, to liberate the intellect. The mod- 
ern world was brought Into close contact with the 
free virility of the ancient world, and emancipated 
from the thralldom of unproved traditions. The force 
to judge and the desire to create were generated. 
The immediate result in the sixteenth century was 
an abrupt secession of the learned, not merely from 
monasticism, but also from the true spirit of Chris- 
tianity. The minds of the Italians assimilated Pa- 
ganism. In their hatred of mediaeval ignorance, in 
their loathing of cowled and cloistered fools, they 
flew to an extreme, and affected the manner of an 
irrevocable past. This extravagance led of necessity 
to a reaction — in the north to Puritanism, in the south 
to what has been termed the Counter- Reformation 
effected under Spanish influences in the Latin Church. 
But Christianity, that most precious possession of the 
modern world, was never seriously imperiled by the 
classical enthusiasm of the Renaissance ; nor, on the 
other hand, was the progressive emancipation of the 
reason materially retarded by the reaction it produced. 
The transition at this point to the third branch In 
the discovery of man, the revelation to the conscious 
ness of its own spiritual freedom. Is natural. Not only 
did scholarship restore the classics and encourage lit- 



z6 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

erary criticism; It also restored the text of the Bible, 
and encouraged theological criticism. In the wake 
of theological freedom followed a free philosophy, no 
longer subject to the dogmas of the Church. To 
purge the Christian faith from false conceptions, to 
liberate the conscience from the tyranny of priests, 
and to interpret religion to the reason has been the 
work of the last centuries; nor is this work as yet by 
any means accomplished. On the one side Descartes 
and Bacon, Spinoza and Locke, are sons of the Re- 
naissance, champions of new-found philosophical free- 
dom; on the other side, Luther Is a son of the Re- 
naissance, the herald of new-found religious freedom. 
The whole movement of the Reformation is a phase 
in that accelerated action of the modern mind which 
at its commencement we call the Renaissance. It is 
a mistake to regard the Reformation as an isolated 
phenomenon or as a mere effort to restore the Church 
to purity. The Reformation exhibits in the region 
of religious thought and national politics what the 
Renaissance displays in the sphere of culture, art, 
and science — the recovered energy and freedom of 
the reason. We are too apt to treat of histor}' in 
parcels, and to attempt to draw lessons from detached 
chapters in the biography of the human race. To 
observe the connection between the several stages of 
a progressive movement of the human spirit, and to 
recognize that the forces at work are still active, is 
the true philosophy of history. 

The Reformation, like the revival of science and 



REFORMATION AND REVOLUTION. »7 

of culture, had its mediaeval anticipations and fore- 
shadowings. The heretics whom the Church suc- 
cessfully combated in North Italy, France, and Bo- 
hemia were the precursors of Luther. The scholars 
prepared the way in the fifteenth century. Teachers 
of Hebrew, founders of Hebrew type — Reuchlin in 
Germany, Aleander in Paris, Von Hutten as a 
pamphleteer, and Erasmus as a humanist — contrib 
ute each a definite momentum. Luther, for his part, 
incarnates the spirit of revolt against tyrannical author- 
ity, urges the necessity of a return to the essential 
truth of Christianity, as distinguished from the idols 
of the Church, and asserts the right of the individual 
to judge, interpret, criticise, and construct opinion fo? 
himself The veil which the Church had interposed 
between the human soul and God was broken down. 
The freedom of the conscience was established. Thus 
the principles involved in what we call the Reforma- 
tion were momentous. Connected on the one side 
with scholarship and the study of texts, it opened the 
path for modern biblical criticism. Connected on the 
other side with the intolerance of mere authority; it 
led to what has since oeen named rationalism — the 
attempt to reconcile the religious tradition with the 
reason, and to define the logical ideas that underlie 
the conceptions of the popular religious conscious- 
ness. Again, by promulgating the doctrine of per- 
sonal freedom, and by connecting itself with national 
politics, the reformation was linked historically to the 
revolution. It was the Puritan Church In England 



28 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

Stimulated by the patriotism of the Dutch Protest 
ants, which established our constitutional liberty, and 
introduced in America the general principle of the 
equality of men. This high political abstraction, la- 
tent in Christianity, evolved by criticism, and promul- 
gated as a gospel in the second half of the last cen 
tury, was externalized in the French Revolution. 
The work that yet remains to be accomplished for 
the modern world is the organization of society in 
harmony with democratic principles. 

Thus what the word Renaissance really means is 
new birth to liberty — the spirit of mankind recover- 
ing consciousness and the power of self-determina- 
tion, recognizing the beauty of the outer world, and 
of the body through art, liberating the reason in sci- 
ence and the conscience in religion, restoring culture 
to the intelligence, and establishing the principle of 
political freedom. The Church was the schoolmaster 
of the Middle Ages. Culture was the humanizing and 
refining Influence of the Renaissance. The problem 
for the present and the future Is how through educa- 
ti:)n to render knowledge accessible to all — to break 
down that barrier which in the Middle Ages was set 
between clerk and layman, and which In the interme- 
diate period has arisen between the intelligent and 
ignorant classes. Whether the Utopia of a modern 
world, In which all men shall enjoy the same social, 
political, and intellectual advantages, be realized oi 
not, we cannot doubt that the whole movement of hu- 
manity from the Renaissance onward has tended in 



INVENTIONS. 39 

this direction. To destroy the distinctions mental 
and physical, which nature raises between individuak, 
and which constitute an actual hierarchy, will always 
be impossible. Yet it may happen that in the future 
no civilized man will lack the opportunity of being 
physically and mentally the best that God has made 
him. 

It remains to speak of the instruments and me- 
chanical inventions which aided the emancipation of 
the spirit in the modern age. Discovered over and 
over again, and offered at intervals to the human race 
at various times and on divers soils, no effective use 
was made of these material resources until the fif- 
teenth century. The compass, discovered according 
to tradition by Gioja of Naples in 1302, was employed 
by Columbus for the voyage to America in 1492. 
The telescope, known to the Arabians in the Middle 
Ages, and described by Roger Bacon in i2 5o, helped 
Copernicus to prove the revolution of the earth in 
1530, and Galileo to substantiate his theory of the 
planetary system. Printing, after numerous useless 
revelations to the world of its resources, became an 
art in 1438; and paper, which had long been known 
to the Chinese, was first made of cotton in Europe 
about 1000, and of rags in 13 19. Gunpowder en- 
tered into use about 1320. As employed by the 
Genius of the Renaissance, each one of these inven- 
tions became a lever by means of which to move the 
world. Gunpowder revolutionized the art of war 
The feudal castle, the armor of the Knight and hi? 



30 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

battle-horse, the prowess of one man against a hun 
dred, and the pride of aristocratic cavalry tramp- 
ling upon ill-armed militia, were annihilated by the 
flashes of the canon. Courage became more a moral 
than a physical quality. The victory was delivered to 
the brain of the general. Printing has established, as 
indestructible, all knowledge, and disseminated, as the 
common property of every one, all thought; while 
paper has made the work of printing cheap. Such 
reflections as these, however, are trite, and must 
occur to every mind. It is far more to the purpose 
to repeat that not the inventions, but the intelligence 
that used them, the conscious calculating spirit of the 
modern world, should rivet our attention when we 
direct it to the phenomena of the Renaissance. 

In the work of the Renaissance all the great na- 
tions of Europe shared. But it must never be for- 
gotten that as a matter of history the true Renais- 
sance began in Italy. It was there that the essential 
qualities which distinguish the modern from the an- 
cient and the mediaeval world were developed. Italy 
created that new spiritual atmosphere of culture and 
of intellectual freedom which has been the life -breath 
of the European races. As the Jews are called the 
chosen and peculiar people of divine revelation, so 
may the Italians be called the chosen and peculiar 
vessels of the prophecy of the Renaissance. In art, 
in scholarship, in science, in the mediation between 
antique culture and the modern intellect, they took 
the lead, handing to Germany and France and En- 



ORIGINS OF THE RENAISSANCE. 31 

gland the restored humanities complete. Spain and 
England have since done more for the exploration 
and colonization of the world. Germany achieved 
the labor of the Reformation almost single-handed. 
France has collected, centralized, and diffused, intel- 
ligence with irresistible energy. But if we return to 
the first origins of the Renaissance, we find that, at 
a time when the rest of Europe was inert, Italy had 
already begun to organize the various elements of 
the modern spirit, and to set the fashion whereby the 
other great nations should learn and live. 



CHAPTER II. 

ITALIAN HISTORY. 

The special Difficulties of this Subject — Apparent Confusion — Want 
of leading Motive — The Papacy — The Empire — The Republics — 
The Despots — The People — The Dismemberment of Italy — Two 
main Topics — The Rise of the Communes — Gothic Kingdom — 
Lombards — Franks — Germans — The Bishops — The Consuls — 
The Podest^s — Civil Wars — Despots — The Balance of Power — 
The Five Italian States — The Italians fail to achieve National 
Unity — The Causes of this Failure — Conditions under which it 
might have been achieved — A Republic — A Kingdom — A Con- 
federation — A Tyranny — The Part played by the Papacy. 

After a first glance into Italian history the student 
recoils as from a chaos of inscrutable confusion. To 
fix the moment of transition from ancient to modern 
civilization seems impossible. There is no formation 
of a new people, as in the case of Germany or France 
or England, to serve as starting-point. Differ as the 
Italian races do in their original type; Gauls, Ligu- 
rians, Etruscans, Umbrians, Latins, lapygians, Greeks 
have been fused together beneath the stress of Roman 
rule into a nation that survives political mutations and 
the disasters of barbarian invasions. Goths, Lom- 
bards, and Franks blend successively with the masses 
of this complex population, and lose the outlines of 
their several personalities. The western Empire melts 
imperceptibly away. The Roman Church grows no 



CONFUSION IN ITALIAN HISTORY, 33 

less imperceptibly, and forms the Holy Roman Em- 
pire as the equivalent of its own spiritual greatness 
in the sphere of secular authority. These two insti- 
tutions, the crowning monuments of Italian creative 
genius, dominate the Middle Ages, powerful as facts, 
but still more powerful as ideas. Yet neither of them 
controls the evolution of Italy in the same sense as 
France was controlled by the monarchical, and Ger- 
many by the federative, principle. The forces of the 
nation, divided and swayed from side to side by this 
commanding dualism, escaped both influences in so 
far as either Pope or Emperor strove to mold them 
into unity. Meanwhile the domination of Byzantine 
Greeks in the southern provinces, the kingdom of 
the Goths at Ravenna, the kingdom of the Lombards 
and Franks at Pavia, the incursions of Huns and 
Saracens, the kingdom of the Normans at Palermo, 
formed but accidents and moments in a national 
development which owed important modifications 
to each successive episode, but was not finally 
determined by any of them. When the Communes 
emerge into prominence, shaking off the supremacy 
of the Greeks in the South, vindicating their liberties 
against the Empire in the North, jealously guarding 
their independence from Papal encroachment in the 
center, they have already assumed shapes of marked 
distinctness and bewildering diversity. Venice, Mi- 
lan, Genoa, Florence, Bologna, Siena, Perugia, Amalfi, 
Lucca, Pisa, to mention only a few of the more not- 
able, are indiscriminately called Republics. Yet they 



34 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

differ in their internal type no less than in external 
conditions. Each wears from the first and preserves 
a physiognomy that justifies our thinking and speak- 
ing of the town as an incarnate entity. The cities 
of Italy, down to the very smallest, bear the attributes 
of individuals. The mutual attractions and repulsions 
that presided over their growth have given them 
specific qualities which they will never lose, which 
will be reflected in their architecture, in their customs, 
in their language, in their policy, as well as in the 
institutions of their government. We think of them 
involuntarily as persons, and reserve for them epithets 
that mark the permanence of their distinctive charac- 
ters. To treat of them collectively is almost impos- 
sible. Each has its own biography, and plays a part 
of consequence in the great drama of the nation. 
Accordingly the study of Italian politics, Italian lit- 
erature. Italian art, is really not the study of one 
national genius, but of a whole family of cognate 
geniuses, grouped together, conscious of affinity, 
obeying the same general conditions, but issuing 
in markedly divergent characteristics. Democracies,. 
oligarchies, aristocracies spring Into being by laws 
of natural selection within the limits of a single prov- 
ince. Every municipality has a separate nomencla- 
ture for its magistracies, a somewhat different method 
of distributing administrative functions. In one place 
there Is a Doge appointed for life; In another the 
government Is put Into commission among officers 
elected for a period of months. Here we find a 



DIVERSITY OF TYFE. 35 

Patrician, a Senator, a Tribune; there Consuls, Rec 
tors, Priors, Ancients, Buonuomini, Conservatori. At 
one period and in one city the Podesta seems para- 
mount; across the border a Captain of the People or a 
Gonfaloniere di Giustizia is supreme. Vicars of the 
Empire, Exarchs, Catapans, Rectors for the Church, 
Legates, Commissaries, succeed each other with daz- 
;ding rapidity. Councils are multiplied and called 
by names that have their origin and meaning buried 
in the dust of archaeology. Consigli del Popolo, 
Credenza, Consiglio del Comune, Senato, Gran Con- 
siglio, Pratiche, Parlamenti, Monti, Consiglio de' Savi, 
Arti, Parte Guelfa, Consigli di Dieci, di Tre, I Nove, 
Gli Otto, I Cento — such are a few of the titles chosen 
at random from the constitutional records of different 
localities. 

Not one is insignificant. Not one but indicates 
some moment of importance in the social evolution 
of the state. Not one but speaks of civil strife, 
whereby the burgh in question struggled into indi- 
viduality and defined itself against its neighbor. 
LiKe fossils in geological strata, these names sur- 
vive long after their old uses have been forgotten, 
to guide the explorer in his reconstruction of a bur- 
ied past. While one town appears to respect the 
feudal lordship of great families, another pronounces 
nobility to be a crime, and forces on its citizens the 
reality or the pretense of labor. Some recognize the 
supremacy of ecclesiastics. Others, like Venice, re- 
sist the least encroachment of the Church, and stand 



36 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

aloof from Roman Christianity in jealous isolation. 
The interests of one class are maritime, of another 
military, of a third, industrial, of a fourth financial, of 
a fifth educational. Amalfi, Pisa, Genoa, and Venice 
depend for power upon their fleets and colonies; the 
little cities of Romagna and the March supply the 
Captains of adventure with recruits; Florence and 
Lucca live by manufacture; Milan by banking; Bo- 
logna, Padua, Vicenza, owe their wealth to students 
attracted by their universities. Foreign alliances or 
geographical affinities connect one center with the 
Empire of the East, a second with France, a third 
with Spain. The North is overshadowed by Ger- 
many; the South is disquieted by Islam. The types 
thus formed and thus discriminated are vital, and per- 
sist for centuries with the tenacity of physical growths. 
Each differentiation owes its origin to causes deeply 
rooted in the locality. The freedom and apparent 
waywardness of nature, when she sets about to form 
crystals of varying shapes and colors, that shall last 
and bear her stamp for ever, have governed their up-^ 
rising and their progress to maturity. At the same 
time they exhibit the keen jealousies and mutual ha- 
treds of rival families in the animal kingdom. Pisa 
destroys Amalfi; Genoa, Pisa; Venice, Genoa; with 
ruthless and remorseless egotism in the conflict of 
commercial interests. Florence enslaves Pisa because 
she needs a way to the sea. Siena and Perugia, 
upon their inland altitudes, consume themselves in 
brilliant but unavailing efforts to expand Milan en- 



INTERNECINE STRIFE. 57 

giilfs the lesser towns of Lombardy. Verona absorbs 
Padua and Treviso. Venice extends dominion over 
the Friuli and the Veronese conquests. Strife and 
covetousness reign from the Alps to the Ionian Sea. 
But it is a strife of living energies, the covetousness 
of impassioned and puissant units. Italy as a whole 
is almost invisible to the student by reason of the 
many-sided, combative, self-centered crowd of num- 
berless Italian communities. Proximity foments ha- 
tred and stimulates hostility. Fiesole looks down 
and threatens Florence. Florence returns frown for 
frown, and does not rest till she has made her neigh- 
bor of the hills a slave. Perugia and Assissi turn 
the Umbrian plain into a wilderness of wolves by 
their recurrent warfare. Scowling at one another 
across the Valdichiana, Perugia rears a tower against 
Chiusi, and Chiusi builds her Becca Questa in respon- 
sive menace. The tiniest burgh upon the Arno re- 
ceives from Dante, the poet of this internecine strife 
and fierce town -rivalry, its stigma of immortalizing 
satire and insulting epithet, for no apparent reason 
but that its dwellers dare to drink of the same water 
and to breathe the same air as Florence. It would 
seem as though the most ancient furies of antagonis- 
tic races, enchained and suspended for centuries by 
the magic of Rome, had been unloosed; as though 
the indigenous populations of Italy, tamed by antique 
culture, were reverting to their primal instincts, with 
all the discords and divisions introduced by the mili- 
tary system of the Lombards, the feudalism of the 



38 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

Franks, the alien institutions of the Germans, super 
added to exasperate the passions of a nation blindly 
struggling against obstacles that block the channel of 
continuous progress. Nor is this the end of the per- 
plexity. Not only are the cities at war with one an- 
other, but they are plunged in ceaseless strife within 
the circuit of their ramparts. The people with the 
nobles, the burghs with the castles, the plebeians with 
the burgher aristocracy, the men of commerce with 
the men of arms and ancient lineage, Guelfs and 
Ghlbelllnes, clash together in persistent fury. One 
half the city expels the other half. The exiles roam 
abroad, cement alliances, and return to extirpate their 
conquerors. Fresh proscriptions and new expulsions 
follow. Again alliances are made and revolutions ac- 
complished, till the ancient feuds of the towns are 
crossed, recrossed, and tangled in a web of madness 
that defies analysis. Through the medley of quar- 
reling, divided, subdivided, and intertwisted factions, 
ride Emperors followed by their bands of knights, ap- 
pearing for a season on vain quests, and withdrawing 
after they have tenfold confounded the confusion. 
Papal Legates drown the cities of the Church In 
blood, preach crusades, fulminate Interdictions, rouse 
insurrections in the States that own allegiance to the 
Empire. Monks stir republican revivals In old cities 
that have lost their liberties, or assemble the popula- 
tions of crime-maddened districts in aimless comedies 
of piety and false pacification, or lead them barefooted 
and intoxicated with shrill cries of ' Mercy ' over 



DISMEMBERMENT OF ITALY, 39 

plain and mountain. Princes of France, Kings of Bo- 
hemia and Hungary, march and countermarch from 
north to south and back again, form leagues, establish 
realms, head confederations, which melt like shapes 
we form from clouds to nothing. At one time the 
Pope and Emperor use Italy as the arena of a deadly 
duel, drawing the congregated forces of the nation 
into their dispute. At another they join hands to di- 
vide the spoil of ruined provinces. Great generals 
with armies at their backs start into being from ap- 
parent nothingness, dispute the sovereignty of Italy 
in bloodless battles, found ephemeral dynasties, and 
pass away like mists upon a mountain-side beneath a 
puff of wind. Conflict, ruin, desolation, anarchy are 
ever yielding place to concord, restoration, peace, 
prosperity, and then recurring with a mighty flood of 
violence. Construction, destruction, and reconstruc- 
tion play their part in crises that have to be counted 
by the thousands. 

In the mean time, from this hurricane of disorder 
rises the clear ideal of the national genius. Italy 
becomes self-conscious and attains the spiritual pri 
macy of modern Europe. Art, Learning, Literature, 
State-craft, Philosophy, Science build a sacred and 
inviolable city of the soul amid the tumult of seven 
thousand revolutions, the dust and crash of falling 
cities, the tramplings of recurrent invasions, the in- 
famies and outrages of tyrants and marauders who 
oppress the land. Unshaken by the storms that rage 
around it, this refuge of the spirit, raised by Italian 



40 FENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

poets, thinkers, artists, scholars, and discoverers, 
grows unceasingly in bulk and strength, until the 
younger nations take their place beneath its ample 
dome. Then, while yet the thing of wonder and of 
beauty stands in fresh perfection, at that supreme 
moment when Italy is tranquil and sufficient to ful- 
fill the noblest mission for the world, we find her 
ciiished and trampled under foot. Her tempestuous 
but splendid story closes in the calm of tyranny im- 
posed by Spain. 

Over this vertiginous abyss of history, where the 
memories of antique civilization blend with the grow- 
ing impulses of modern life in an uninterrupted se- 
quence of national consciousness ; through this many- 
chambered laboratory of conflicting principles, where 
the ideals of the Middle Age are shaped, and laws 
are framed for Europe ; across this wonder-land of 
waning and of waxing culture, where Goths, Greeks, 
Lombards, Franks, and Normans come to form them- 
selves by contact with the ever-living soul of Rome; 
where Frenchmen, Spaniards, Swiss, and Germans at 
a later period battle for the richest prize in Europe, 
and learn by conquest from the conquered to be 
men ; how shall we guide our course ? If we fol- 
low the fortunes of the Church, and make the Papacy 
the thread on which the history of Italy shall hang, 
we gain the advantage of basing our narrative upon 
the most vital and continuous member of the body 
politic. But we are soon forced to lose sight of the 
Italians in the crowd of other Christian races. The 



WANT OF LEADING MOTIVE. 4 1 

history of the Church is cosmopolitan. The Sphere 
of the Papacy extends in all directions around Italy 
taken as a local center. Its influence, moreover, 
was invariably one of discord rather than of hai* 
mony within the boundaries of the peninsula. If we 
take the Empire as our standing-ground, we have 
to wTite the annals of a sustained struggle, in the 
course of which the Italian cities were successful, 
when they reduced the Emperor to the condition of 
an absentee with merely nominal privileges. After 
Frederick II. the Empire played no important part 
in Italy until its rights were reasserted by Charles V. 
upon the platform of modern politics. A power so 
external to the true life of the nation, so successfully 
resisted, so impotent to control the development of 
the Italians, cannot be chosen as the central point 
of their history. If we elect the Republics, we are 
met with another class of difficulties. The historian 
who makes the Commune his unit, who confines at 
tention to the gradual development, reciprocal ani- 
mosities, and final decadence of the republics, can 
hardly do justice to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies 
and the Papacy, which occupy no less than half the 
country. Again, the great age of the Renaissance, 
when all the free burghs accepted the rule of despots, 
and when the genius of the Italians culminated, is 
for him a period of downfall and degradation. Be- 
sides, he leaves the history of the Italian people be- 
fore the starting-point of the Republics unexplained. 
He has, at the close of their career, to account for 



4 J RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

the reason why these Communes, so powerful in self- 
development, so intelligent, so wealthy, and so capa- 
ble of playing off the Pope against the Empire, failed 
to maintain their independence. In other words he 
selects one phase of Italian evolution, and writes a 
narrative that cannot but be partial. If we make the 
Despots our main point, we repeat the same error 
in a worse form. The Despotisms imply the Com- 
munes as their predecessors. Each and all of them 
grew up and flourished on the soil of decadent or 
tired Republics. Though they are all-important at 
one period of Italian history — the period of the pres- 
ent work — they do but form an episode in the great 
epic of the nation. He who attempts a general his- 
tory of Italy from the point of view of the despot- 
isms, is taking a single scene for the whole drama. 
Finally we might prefer the people — that people, 
instinctively and persistently faithful to Roman tra- 
ditions, which absorbed into itself the successive 
hordes of barbarian invaders, civilized them, and 
adopted them as men of Italy; that people which 
destroyed the kingdoms of the Goths and Lombards, 
humbled the Empire at Legnano, and evolved the 
Communes ; that people which resisted alien feudal- 
ism, and spent its prime upon eradicating every trace 
of the repugnant system from its midst ; that people 
which finally attained to the consciousness of national 
unity by the recovery of scholarship and culture under 
the dominion of despotic princes. This people is 
Italy. But the documents that should throw light 



THE PEOPLE. 43 

Upon the early annals of the people are deficient, 
It does not appear upon the scene before the reign 
of Otho I. Nor does it become supreme till after 
the Peace of Constance. Its biography is bound up 
with that of the republics and the despots. Before 
the date of their ascendency we have to deal witli 
Bishops of Rome, Emperors of the East and West, 
Exarchs and Kings of Italy, the feudal Lords of the 
Marches, the Dukes and Counts of Lombard and 
Prankish rulers. Through that long period of in- 
cubation, when Italy freed herself from dependence 
upon Byzantium, created the Papacy and formed the 
second Roman Empire, the people exists only as a 
spirit resident in Roman towns and fostered by the 
Church, which effectually repelled all attempts at 
monarchical unity, playing the Lombards off against 
the Goths, the Franks against the Lombards, the 
Normans against the Greeks, merging the Italian 
Kingdom in the Empire when it became German, 
and resisting the Empire of its own creation when 
the towns at last were strong enough to stand alone. 
To speak about the people in this early period is 
therefore, to invoke a myth; to write its history is 
the same as writing an ideal history of mediaeval 
Europe. 

The truth is that none of these standpoints in iso- 
lation suffices for the student of Italy. Her inner 
history is the history of social and intellectual prog- 
ress evolving itself under the conditions of attraction 
and repulsion generated by the double ideas of Papacy 



44 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

and Empire. Political unity is everywhere and at all 
times imperiously rejected. The most varied consti- 
tutional forms are needed for the self-effectuation of a 
race that has no analogue in Europe. The theocracy 
of Rome, the monarchy of Naples, the aristocracy of 
Venice, the democracy of Florence, the tyranny of 
Milan are equally instrumental in elaborating the 
national genius that gave art, literature, and mental 
liberty to modern society. The struggles of city with 
city for supremacy or bare existence, the internecine 
wars of party against party, the never-ending clash 
of principles within the States, educated the people to 
multifarious and vivid energy. In the course of those 
long complicated contests, the chief centers acquired 
separate personalities, assumed che physiognomy of 
conscious freedom, and stamped the mark of their 
own spirit on their citizens. At the end of all dis- 
cords, at the close of all catastrophes, we find in each 
of the great towns a population released from mental 
bondage and fitted to perform the work of intellectual 
emancipation for the rest of Europe. Thus the es- 
sential characteristic of Italy is diversity, controlled 
and harmonized by an ideal rhythm of progressive 
movement.^ We who are mainly occupied in this 
book with the Italian genius as it expressed itself in 
society, scholarship, fine art, and literature, at its most 

• See Guicciardini {Op. hied. vol. i. p. 28) for an eloquent demon- 
stration of the happiness, prosperity, and splendor conferred on the 
Italians by the independence of their several centers. He is arguing 
against Machiavelli's lamentation over their failure to achieve na- 
tional unity. 



WEAKNESS THROUGH DISMEMBERMENT. 45 

brilliant period of renascence, may accept this fact of 
political dismemberment with acquiescence. It was 
to the variety of conditions offered by the Italian 
communities that we owe the unexampled richness 
of the mental life of Italy. Yet it is impossible to 
overlook the weakness inflicted on the people by 
those same conditions when the time came for Italy 
to try her strength against the nations of Europe.^ 
It was then shown that the diversities which stimu- 
lated spiritual energy were a fatal source of national 
instability. The pride of the Italians in their local 
independence, their intolerance of unification under a 
single head, the jealousies that prevented them from 
forming a permanent confederation, rendered them 
incapable of coping with races which had yielded to 
the centripetal force of monarchy. If it Is true that 
the unity of the nation under a kingdom founded at 
Pavia would have deprived the world of much that 
Italy has yielded in the sphere of thought and art, It 
Is certainly not less true that such centralization alone 
could have averted the ruin of the sixteenth century 
which gives the aspect of a tragedy to each volume 
of my work on the Renaissance. 

Without seeking to attack the whole problem of 
Italian history, two main topics must be briefly dis- 

» This was the point urged by Machiavelli, in the Principe, the 
Discorsi, and the Art of War. VVMth keener political insight than 
Guicciardini, he perceived that the old felicity of Italy was about to 
fail her through the very independence of her local centers, which 
Ciui-cciardini rightly recognized as the source of her unparalleled civ- 
ilization and wealth. The one thing needful in the shock with France 
and Spain was unity. 



46 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

cussed in the present chapter before entering on the 
proper matter of this work. The first relates to the 
growth of the Communes, which preceded, necessi- 
tated, and determined the despotisms of the fifteenth 
century. The second raises the question why Italian 
differs from any other national history, why the peo- 
ple failed to achieve unity either under a sovereign 
or in a powerful confederation. These two subjects 
of inquiry are closely connected and interdependent. 
They bring into play the several points that have 
been indicated as partially and imperfectly explana- 
tory of the problem of Italy. But, since I have un- 
dertaken to write neither a constitutional nor a politi- 
cal history, but a history of culture at a certain epoch 
it will be enough to treat of these two questions 
briefly, with the special view of showing under what 
conditions the civilization of the Renaissance came to 
maturity in numerous independent Communes, re- 
duced at last by necessary laws of circumstance to 
tyranny; and how it was checked at the point of 
transition to its second phase of modern existence, by 
political weakness inseparable from the want of na- 
tional coherence in the shock with mightier military 
races. 

Modem Italian history may be said to begin with 
the retirement of Honorius to Ravenna and the sub 
sequent foundation of Odoacer's Kingdom in 476. 
The Western Empire ended, and Rome was recog- 
nized as a Republic. When Zeno sent the Goths 
into Italy, Theodoric established himself at Ravenna, 



THE GOTHS AND LOMBARDS. 47 

continued the institutions and usages of the ancient 
Empire, and sought by blending with the people to 
naturalize his alien authority. Rome was respected 
as the sacred city of ancient culture and civility. Her 
Consuls, appointed by the Senate, were confirmed in 
due course by the Greek Emperor; and Theodoric 
made himself the vicegerent of the Caesars rather than 
an independent sovereign. When we criticise the 
Ostro- Gothic occupation by the light of subsequent 
history, it is clear that this exclusion of the capital 
from Theodoric's conquest and his veneration for the 
Eternal City were fatal to the unity of the Italian 
realm. From the moment that Rome was separated 
from the authority of the Italian Kings, there existed 
two powers in the Peninsula — the one secular, mon- 
archical, with the military strength of the barbarians 
imposed upon its ancient municipal organization; the 
other ecclesiastical, pontifical, relying on the undefined 
ambitions of S. Peter s See and the unconquered in- 
stincts of the Roman people scattered through the 
still surviving cities.^ Justinian, bent upon asserting 
his rights as the successor of the Caesars, wrested 
Italy from the hands of the Goths; but scarcely was 
this revolution effected when Narses, the successor of 
Belisarius, called a new nation of barbarians to sup- 

• When I apply the term Roman here and elsewhere to the in- 
habitants of the Italian towns, I wish to indicate the indigenous Italic 
populations molded by Roman rule into homogeneity. The resurg- 
ence of this population and its reattainment of intellectual conscious- 
!iess by the recovery of past traditions and the rejection of foreign 
influence constitutes the histoiy of Italy upon the close of the Dark 
Ages. 



48 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

port his policy in Italy. Narses died before the ad 
vent of the Lombards; but they descended, in forces 
far more formidable than the Goths, and established 
a second kingdom at Pavia. Under the Lombard 
domination Rome was left untouched. Venice, with 
her population gathered from the ruins of the neigh- 
boring Roman cities, remained in quasi -subjection to 
the Empire of the East. Ravenna became a Greek 
garrison, ruling the Exarchate and Pentapolis under 
the name of the Byzantine Emperors. The western 
coast escaped the Lombard domination; for Genoa 
grew slowly into power upon her narrow cornice be- 
tween hills and sea, while Pisa defied the barbarians 
intrenched in military stations at Fiesole and Lucca. 
In like manner the islands, Sicily, Sardinia, and Cor- 
sica, were detached from the Lombard Kingdom; and 
the maritime cities of Southern Italy, Bari, Naples, 
Amalfi, and Gaeta asserted independence under the 
shadow of the Greek ascendency. What the Lom- 
bards achieved in their conquest, and what they failed 
to accomplish, decided the future of Italy. They 
broke the country up into unequal blocks; for while 
the inland regions of the north obeyed Pavia, while 
the great duchies of Spoleto in the center and of 
Benevento in the south owned the nominal sway of 
Alboin's successors,^ Venice and the Riviera, Pisa 
and the maritime republics of Apulia and Calabria, 

• It will be remembered by students of early Italian history thai 
Benevento and Spoleto joined the Church in her war upon the Lom- 
bard kingdom. Spoleto was broken up. Benevento survived as a 
Lombard duchy till the Norman Conquest 



THE LOMBARDS AND THE CHURCH, 49 

Ravenna and the islands, repelled their sovereignty. 
Rome remained inviolable beneath the aegis of her 
ancient prestige, and the decadent Empire of the 
East was too inert to check the freedom of the 
towns which recognized its titular supremacy; 

The kingdom of the Lombards endured two cen- 
turies, and left ineffaceable marks upon Italy. A 
cordon of military cities was drawn round the old 
Roman centers in Lombardy, Tuscany, and the 
Duchy of Spoleto. Pavia rose against Milan, which 
had been a second Rome, Cividale against Aquileia, 
Fiesole against Florence, Lucca against Pisa. The 
country was divided into Duchies and Marches; mili- 
tary service was exacted from the population, and 
the laws of the Lombard?, Mninum jus, quoddam 
jus quod facieb ant reges per se, as the jurists after- 
wards defined them, were imposed upon the de- 
scendants of Roman civilization. Yet the outlying 
cities of the sea-coast, as we have already seen, were 
independent; and Rome remained to be the center 
of revolutionary ideas, the rallying-point of a policy 
inimical to Lombard unity. Not long after their set- 
tlement, the princes of the Lombard race took the 
fatal step of joining the Catholic communion, where- 
by they strengthened the hands of Rome and ex- 
cluded themselves from tyrannizing in the last resort 
over the growing independence of the Papal See. 
The causes of their conversion from Arianism to 
orthodox Latin Christianity are buried in obscurity. 
But it is probable that they were driven to this meas- 



fO RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

ure by the rebelliousness of their great vassals and 
the necessity of resting for support upon the indige- 
nous populations they had subjugated. Rome, profit- 
ing by the errors and the weakness of her antago- 
nists, extended her spiritual dominion by enforcing 
sacraments, ordeals, and appeals to ecclesiastical tri- 
bunals, organized her hierarchy under Gregory the 
Great, and lost no opportunity of enriching and ag- 
grandizing her bishoprics. In 718 she shook off 
the yoke of Byzantium by repelling the heresies of 
Leo the Isaurian; and when this insurrection menaced 
her with the domestic tyranny of the Lombard Kings, 
who possessed themselves of Ravenna In 728, she 
called the Franks to her aid against the now power- 
ful realm. Stephen H. journeyed in 753 to Gaul, 
named Pippin Patrician of Rome, and invited him to 
the conquest of Italy. In the war that followed, the 
Franks subdued the Lombards, and Charles the Great 
was invested with their kingdom and crowned Em- 
peror in 800 by Leo III. at Rome. 

The famous compact between Charles the Great 
and the Pope was in effect a ratification of the exist 
Ing state of things. The new Emperor took for him 
self and converted into a Frankish Kingdom all the 
provinces that had been wrested from the Lombards 
He relinquished to the Papacy Rome with its patri- 
mony, the portions of Spoleto and Benevento that 
had already yielded to the See of S. Peter, the 
southern provinces that owned the nominal ascend- 
ency of Byzantium, the islands and the cities of the 



CHARLES THE GREAT AND THE POPE, 5 1 

Exarchate and Pentapolls which formed no part of 
the Lombard conquest. By this stipulation no real 
temporal power was accorded to the Papacy, nor did 
the new Empire surrender its paramount rights over 
the peninsula at large. The Italian kingdom,. trans- 
ferred to the Franks in 800, was the kingdom founded 
by the Lombards; while the outlying and unconquered 
districts were placed beneath the protectorate of the 
power which had guided their emancipation. Thus 
the dualism introduced into Italy by Theodoric's ven- 
eration for Rome, and confirmed by the failure of the 
Lombard conquest, was ratified in the settlement 
whereby the Pope gave a new Empire to Western 
Christendom. Venice, Pisa, Genoa, and the mari- 
time Republics of the south, excluded from the king- 
dom, were left to pursue their, own course of inde- 
pendence; and this Is the chief among many reasons 
why they rose so early into prominence. Rome 
consolidated her ancient patrimonies and extended 
her rectorship in the center, while the Prankish 
kings, who succeeded each other through eight 
reigns, developed the Regno upon feudal principles 
by parceling the land among their Counts. New 
marches were formed, traversing the previous Lom- 
bard fabric and Introducing divisions that decentral- 
ized the kingdom. Thus the great vassals of Ivrea, 
Verona, Tuscany, and Spoleto raised themselves 
against Pavia. The monarchs, placed between the 
Papacy and their ambitious nobles, were unable to 
consolidate the realm; and when Berengar, the last 



51 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

independent sovereign strove to enforce the declining 
authority of Pavia, he was met with the resistance 
and the hatred -of the nation. 

The kingdom Berengar attempted to maintain 
against his vassals and the Church was virtually ab- 
rogated by Otho I., whom the Lombard nobles sum- 
moned into Italy in 95 1. When he reappeared in 
961, he was crowned Emperor at Rome, and as- 
sumed the title of the King of Italy. Thus the Reg- 
no was merged in the Empire, and Pavia ceased to 
be a capital. Henceforth the two great potentates in 
the peninsula were an unarmed Pontiff and an absent 
Emperor. The subsequent history of the Italiani 
shows how they succeeded in reducing both these 
powers to the condition of principles, maintaining the 
pontifical and imperial ideas, but repelling the prac- 
tical authority of either potentate. Otho created new 
marches and gave them to men of German origin. 
The houses of Savoy and Montferrat rose into im- 
portance in his reign. To Verona were intrusted 
the passes between Germany and Italy. The Princes 
of Este at Ferrara held the keys of the Po, while the 
family of Canossa accumulated fiefs that stretched 
from Mantua across the plain of Lombardy, over 
the Apennines to Lucca, and southward to Spoleto. 
Thus the ancient Italy of Lombards and Franks was 
superseded by a new Italy of German feudalism, 
owing allegiance to a suzerain whose interests de- 
tained him in the provinces beyond the Alps. At 
the same time the organization of the Church was 



CONCESSIONS TO THE BISHOPS, 53 

fortified. The Bishops were placed on an equality 
with the Counts in the chief cities, and Viscounts 
were created to represent their civil jurisdiction. It 
is difficult to exaggerate the importance of Otho's 
concessions to the Bishops. During the preceding 
period of Prankish rule about one third of the soil 
of Italy had been yielded to the Church, which had 
the right of freeing its vassals from military service; 
and since the ecclesiastical sees were founded upon 
ancient sites of Roman civilization, without regard to 
the military centers of the barbarian kingdoms, the 
new privileges of the Bishops accrued to the benefit 
of the indigenous population. Milan, for example, 
down -trodden by Pavia, still remained the major See 
of Lombardy. Aquileia, though a desert, had her 
patriarch, while Cividale, established as a fortress to 
coerce the neighboring Roman towns, was ecclesias- 
tically but a village. At this epoch a third power 
emerged in Italy. Berengar had given the cities 
permission to inclose themselves with walls in order 
to repel the invasions of the Huns.^ Otho respected 
their right of self-defense, and from the date of his 
coronation the history of the free burghs begins in 
Italy. It is at first closely connected with the changes 
wrought by the extinction of the kingdom of Pavia, 
by the exaltation of the clergy, and by the disloca- 
tion of the previous system of feud-holding, which 

' It is worthy of notice that to this date belongs the war-chant of 
the Modenese sentinels, with its allusions to Troy and Hector, which 
is recognized as the earliest specimen of the Italian hendecasyllabic 
meter. 



54 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

followed Upon Otho's determination to remodel the 
country in the interest of the German Empire. The 
Regno was abolished. The ancient landmarks of 
nobility were altered and confused. The cities under 
their Bishops assumed a novel character of inde- 
pendence. Those of Roman origin, being ecclesias- 
tical centers, had a distant advantage over the more 
recent foundations of the Lombard and the Prank- 
ish monarchs. The Italic population everywhere 
emerged and displayed a vitality that had been 
crushed and overlaid by centuries of invasion and 
military oppression. 

The burghs at this epoch may be regarded as lu- 
minous points in the dense darkness of feudal aristoc- 
racy.i Gathering round their Cathedral as a center, 
the towns inclose their dwellings with bastions, from 
which they gaze upon a country bristling with castles, 
occupied by serfs, and lorded over by the hierarchical 

> It is not necessary to raise antiquarian questions here relating 
to the origin of the Italian Commune. Whether regarded as a sur- 
vival of the ancient Roman municipium or as an offshoot from the 
Lombard guild, it v^^as a new birth of modern times, a new organ- 
ism evolved to express the functions of Italian as different from an- 
cient Roman or mediaeval Lombard life. The affection of the people 
for their past induced them to use the nomenclature of Latin civility 
lor the officers and councils of the Commune. Thus a specious air 
of classical antiquity, rather literary' and sentimental than real, was 
given to the Commune at the outset. Moreover, it must be remem- 
bered that Rome herself had suffered no substantial interruption of 
republican existence during the Dark Ages. Therefore the free 
burghs, though their vitality was the outcome of wholly new condi- 
tions, though they were built up of guilds and associations repre- 
senting interests of modern origin, llaitered themselves with an un- 
interrupted municipal succession from the Roman era, and pointed 
•or proof to the Eternal City. 



RISE CF THE COMMUNE, 55 

nobility. Within the city the Bishop and the Count 
hold equal sway; but the Bishop has upon his side the 
sympathies and passions of the burghers. The first 
effort of the towns is to expel the Count from their 
midst. Some accident of misrule infuriates the citi- 
zens. They fly to arms and are supported by the 
Bishop. The Count has to retire to the open coun- 
try, where he strengthens himself in his castle.^ Then 
the Bishop remains victor in the town, and forms a 
government of rich and noble burghers, who control 
with him the fortunes of the new-born state. At this 
crisis we begin to hear for the first time a word that 
has been much misunderstood. The Popolo appears 
upon the scene. Interpreting the past by the pres- 
ent, and importing the connotation gained by the 
word people in the revolutions of the last two centu- 
ries, students are apt to assume that the Popolo of the 
Italian burghs included the whole population. In 
reality it was at first a close aristocracy of influential 
families, to whom the authority of the superseded 
Counts was transferred in commission, and who held 
it by liereditary right.^ Unless we firmly grasp this 

> The Italian word contado is a survival from this state of things. 
It represents a moment in the national development when the sphere 
ot the Count outside the city was defined, against the sphere of the 
municipality. The Contadini are the people of the Contado, the 
Counts men. 

« Even Petrarch, in his letter to four Cardinals (Lett. Fam. xi. 16, 
cd. Fracassetti) on the reformation of the Roman Commonwealth, 
recommends the exclusion of the neighboring burghs and all stran- 
gers, inclusive of the Colonna and Orsini families, from the franchise. 
None but pure Romans, how to be discovered from the colluvies 
omnium gentium deposited upon the Seven Hills by centuries of im- 



56 REIJAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

fact, the subsequent vicissitudes of the Italian com- 
monwealths are unintelligible, and the elaborate defi- 
nitions of the Florentine doctrinaires lose half their 
meaning. The internal revolutions of the free cities 
were almost invariably caused by the necessity of en- 
larging the Popolo, and extending its franchise to the 
non-privileged inhabitants. Each effort after expan- 
sion provoked an obstinate resistance from those fam- 
ilies who held the rights of burghership; and thus the 
technical terms primo popolo, secondo popolo, popolo 
grasso, popolo mimcto, frequently occurring in the rec- 
ords of the Republics, indicate several stages in the 
progress from oligarchy to democracy. The consti- 
tution of the city at this early period was simple. At 
the head of its administration stood the Bishop, with 
the Popolo of enfranchised burghers. The Commune 
included the Popolo, together with the non-qualified 
inhabitants, and was represented by Consuls, varying 
in number according to the division of the town into 
quarters.^ Thus the Commune and the Popolo were 
originally separate bodies; and this distinction has 
been perpetuated in the architecture of those towns 
which still can show a Palazzo del Popolo apart from 
the Palazzo del Commune. Since the affairs of the 

migration he does not clearly say, should be chosen to revive thf 
fallen majesty of the Republic. See in particular the peroration ot 
his argument (op. cit. vol. iii. p. 95). In other words^ he aims at a 
narrow Popolo, a pura cittadinanza, in the sense ot Cacciaguida 
Par. xvi. 

' In some places we find as many as twelve Consuls. It appears 
that both the constituent families of the Popolo and the numbers of 
the Consuls were determined by the Sections of the city, so man^ 
being told off for each quarter. 



INTERNAL CONSTITUTION OF AN ITALIAN CITY, 57 

city had to be conducted by discussion, we find Coun- 
cils corresponding to the constituent elements of the 
burgh. There is the Parlamento, in which the inhabi- 
tants meet together to hear the decisions of the Bish- 
op and the Popolo, or to take measures in extreme 
cases that affect the city as a whole; the Gran Con- 
stgltOy which is only open to duly qualified members 
of the Popolo; and the Credenza, or privy council of 
specially delegated burghers, who debate on matters 
demanding secrecy and diplomacy. Such, generally 
speaking, and without regard to local differences, was 
the internal constitution of an Italian city during the 
supremacy of the Bishops. 

In the North of Italy not a few of the greater vas- 
sals, among whom may be mentioned the houses of 
Canossa, Montferrat, Savoy, and Este, creations of the 
Salic Emperors, looked with favor upon the develop- 
ment of the towns, while some nobles went so far as 
to constitute themselves feudatories of Bishops.^ The 
angry warfare carried on against Canossa by the 
Lombard barons has probably to be interpreted by 
the jealousy this popular policy excited. At the same 
time, while Lombardy and Tuscany were establishing 
their municipal liberties, a sympathetic movement be- 
gan in Southern Italy, which resulted in the conquest 
of Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily by the Normans. 
Omitting all the details of this episode, than which 
nothing more dramatic is presented by the history of 

» The Pelavicini of S. Donnino, lor example, gave themselves to 
Parma. 



58 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

modern nations, it must be enough to point out here 
that the Normans finally severed Italy from the 
Greek Empire, gave a monarchical stamp to the 
south of the peninsula, and brought the Regno they 
consolidated into the sphere of national politics under 
the protection of the Pope. Up to the date of their 
conquest Southern Italy had a separate and confused 
history. It now entered the Italian community, and 
by the peculiar circumstances of its cession to the 
Holy See was destined in the future to become 
the chief instrument whereby the Popes disturbed 
the equilibrium of the peninsula in furtherance of 
their ambitious schemes. 

The greatness of the Roman cities under the 
popular rule of their Bishops is illustrated by Milan, 
second only to Rome in the last days of the Empire. 
Milan had been reduced to the condition of abject 
misery by the Kings, who spared no pains to exalt 
Pavia at the expense of her elder sister. After the 
dissolution of the kingdom, she started into a new 
life, and in 1037 her archbishop, Heribert, was sin- 
gled out by Conrad II. as the protagonist of the 
episcopal revolution against feudalism.^ Heribert was 
in truth the hero of the burghs in their first strife tor 
independence. It was he who devised the Carroccuh 
an immense car drawn by oxen, bearing the banner 
of the Commune, with an altar and priests ministrant, 
around which the pikemen of the city mustered when 

» He was summoned before the Diet of Pavia for having dispos- 
sessed a noble of his feud. 



FIRST RECORDS OF A PARLIAMENT, 59 

they went to war. This invention of Heribert's was 
soon adopted by the cities throughout Italy. It gave 
cohesion and confidence to the citizens, reminded 
them that the Church was on their side in the strug- 
gle for freedom, and served as symbol of their mili- 
tary strength in union. The first authentic records 
of a Parliament, embracing the nobles of the Popolo, 
the clergy, and the multitude, are transmitted to us 
by the Milanese Chronicles, in which Heribert figures 
as the president of a republic. From this date Milan 
takes the lead in the contests for municipal independ- 
ence. Her institutions like that of the Carroccio, 
together with her tameless spirit, are communicated 
to the neighboring cities of Lombardy, cross the 
Apennines, and animate the ancient burghs of 
Tuscany. 

Having founded their liberties upon the episcopal 
presidency, the cities now proceeded to claim the 
right of choosing their own Bishops. They refused 
the prelates sent them by the Emperor, and demanded 
an election by the Chapters of each town. This priv- 
ilege was virtually won when the war of Investitures 
broke out in 1073. After the death of Gregory VI. 
in 1046, the Emperors resolved to enforce their right 
of nominating the Popes. The two first prelates im- 
posed on Rome, Clement II. and Damatus II., died 
under suspicion of poison. Thus the Roman people 
refused a foreign Pope, as the Lombards had rejected 
the bishops sent to rule them. The next Popes, 
Leo IX. and Victor II., were persuaded by Hilde- 



6o RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

brand, who now appears upon the stage, to undergo 
a second election at Rome by the clergy and the 
people. They -escaped assassination. But the fifth 
German, Stephen X., again died suddenly; and now 
the formidable monk of Soana felt himself powerful 
enough to cause the election of his own candidate, 
Nicholas II. A Lateran council. Inspired by Hilde- 
brand, transferred the election of Popes to the Cardi- 
nals, approved by the clergy and people of Rome, and 
confirmed the privilege of the cities to choose their 
bishops, subject to Papal ratification. In 1073 Hilde- 
brand assumed the tiara as Gregory VII., and declared 
a war that lasted more than forty years against the 
Empire. At its close in 1122 the Church and the 
Empire were counterposed as mutually exclusive au- 
tocracies, the one claiming Illimitable spiritual sway, 
the other recognized as no less inimitably paramount 
in civil society. From the principles raised by Hilde- 
brand and contested in the struggles of this duel, we 
may date those new conceptions of the two chief 
powers of Christendom which found final expresslor 
in the theocratic philosophy of the Summa and the 
imperial absolutism of the De MonarchiA. Meanwhile 
the Empire and the Papacy, while trying their force 
against each other, had proved to Italy their essential 
weakness. What they gained as Ideas, controlling the 
speculations of the next two centuries, they lost as 
potentates In the peninsula. It was impossible for 
either Pope or Emperor to carry on the war without 
bidding for the support of the cities; and therefore, at 



»04ie OF INVESTITURES. 6l 

the end of the struggle, the free burghs found them* 
selves strengthened at the expense of both powers. 
Still it must not be forgotten that the wars of Investi- 
tures, while they developed the independent spirit and 
the military energies of the Republics, penetrated 
Italy with the vice of party conflict. The ineradi- 
cable divisions of Guelf and Ghibelline were a heavy 
price to pay for a step forward on the path of eman- 
cipation; nor was the ecclesiastical revolution, which 
tended to Italianize the Papacy, while it magnified its 
cosmopolitan ascendency, other than a source of evil 
to the nation. 

The forces liberated in the cities by these wars 
brought the Consuls to the front. The Bishops had 
undermined the feudal fabric of the kingdom, de- 
pressed the Counts, and restored the Roman towns 
to prosperity. During the war both Popolo and 
Commune grew in vigor, and their Consuls began to 
use the authority that had been conquered by the 
prelates. At first the Consuls occupied a subordinate 
position as men of affairs and notaries, needed to 
transact the business of the mercantile inhabitants. 
They now took the lead as political agents of the first 
magnitude, representing the city in its public acts, 
and superseding the ecclesiastics. The Popolo was 
enlarged by the admission of new burgher families, 
and the ruling caste, though still oligarchical, be- 
came more fairly representative of the inhabitants. 
This progress was inevitable, when we remember 
that the cities had beer, r-^-^nizcd for warfare, and 



6 J RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

that, except their Consuls, they had no officials who 
combined civil and military functions. Under the 
jurisdiction of -the Consuls Roman law was every- 
where substituted for Lombard statutes, and another 
strong blow was thus dealt against decaying feudal 
ism. The school of Bologna eclipsed the university 
of Pavia. Justinian's Code was studied with passion- 
ate energy, and the Italic people enthusiastically re- 
verted to the institutions of their past. In the fable 
of the Codex of the Pandects brought by Pisa from 
Amalfi we can trace the fervor of this movement, 
whereby the Romans of the cities struggled after 
resurrection. 

One of the earliest manifestations of municipal 
vitality was the war of city against city, which began 
to blaze with fury in the first half of the twelfth cen- 
tury, and endured so long as free towns lasted to per- 
petuate the conflict. No sooner had the burghs es- 
tablished themselves beneath the presidency of their 
Consuls than they turned the arms they had acquired 
in the war of independence, against their neighbors. 
The phenomenon was not confined to any single dis- 
trict. It revealed a new necessity in the very consti- 
tution of the commonwealths. Penned up within the 
narrow limits of their petty dependencies, throbbing 
with fresh life, overflowing with a populace inured to 
warfare, demanding channels for their energies in 
commerce, competing with each other on the paths 
of Industry, they clashed in deadliest duels for breath- 
ing space and means of \A'ealth. The occasions that 



INTER-URBAN STRIFE. 63 

provoked one Commune to declare war upon its rival 
were trivial. The animosity was internecine and per- 
sistent. Life or death hung in the balance. It was 
a conflict for ascendency that brought the sternest 
passions into play, and decided the survival of the 
fittest among hundreds of competing cities. The 
deeply rooted jealousies of Roman and feudal cen- 
ters, the recent partisanship of Papal and Imperial 
principles, imbittered this strife. But what lay be- 
neath all superficial causes of dissension was the 
economic struggle of communities, for whom the soil 
of Italy already had begun to seem too narrow. So 
superabundant were the forces of her population, so 
vast were the energies emancipated by her attain- 
ment of municipal freedom, that this mighty mother 
of peoples could not afford equal sustenance to all 
her children. New-born, they had to strangle one 
another as they hung upon the breast that gave them 
nourishment. It was impossible for the Emperor to 
overlook the apparent anarchy of his fairest province. 
Therefore, when Frederick Barbarossa was elected in 
1 1 5 2 , his first thought was to reduce the Garden 
of the Empire to order. Soon after his election he 
descended into Lombardy and formed two leagues 
among the cities of the North, the one headed by 
Pa via, the center of the abrogated kingdom, the oth- 
er by Milan, who inherited the majesty of Rome and 
contained within her loins the future of Italian free- 
dom. It is not necessary to follow in detail the con- 
flict of the Lombard burghs with Frederick, so en 



64 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

thusiastically described by their historian, Sismondi. 
It is enough for our present purpose to remember 
that in the coarse of that contention both leagues 
made common cause against the Emperor, drew the 
Pope Alexander III. into their quarrel, and at last in 
1183, after the victory of Legnano had convinced 
Frederick of his weakness, extorted by the Peace of 
Constance privileges whereby their autonomy was 
amply guaranteed and recognized. The advantages 
won by Milan who sustained the brunt of the impe- 
rial onslaughts, and by the splendor of her martyr- 
dom surmounted the petty jealousies of her municipal 
rivals, were extended to the cities of Tuscany. After 
the date of that compact signed by the Emperor and 
his insurgent subjects, the burghs obtained an as- 
sured position as a third power between the Empire 
and the Church. The most remarkable point in the 
history of this contention is the unanimous submis- 
sion of the Communes to what they regarded 
as the just suzerainty of Caesar's representative. 
Though they were omnipotent in Lombardy, they 
took no measures for closing the gates of the Alps 
against the Germans. The Emperor was free to 
come and go as he listed; and when peace was 
signed, he reckoned the burghers who had beaten him 
by arms and policy, among his loyal vassals. Still 
the spirit of independence in Italy had been amply 
asserted. This is notably displayed in the address 
presented to Frederick, before his coronation, by the 
senate of Rome. Regenerated by Arnold of Bre- 



THE ITALIAN NATION. 65 

scias revolutionary mission, the Roman people as- 
sumed its antique majesty in these remarkable words : 
' Thou wast a stranger ; I have made thee citizen : 
thou camest from regions from beyond the Alps; I 
have conferred on thee the principality.' ^ Presump- 
tuous boast as this sounded in the ears of Frederick, 
it proved that the Italic nation had now sharply de- 
fined itself against the Church and the barbarians. It 
still accepted the Empire because the Empire was the 
glory of Italy, the crown that gave to her people the 
presidency of civilization. It still recognized the au- 
thority of the Church because the Church was the 
eldest daughter of Italy emergent from the wrecks of 
Roman society. But the nation had become con 
scious of its right to stand apart from either. 

> ' Hospes eras, civem feci. Ad vena fuisti ex transalpinis parti- 
bus, principem constitui. Quod meum jure fuit, tibi dedi.* See 
Ottonis Episcopi Frisingensis Chronicon, De Rebus Gestis Frid. i. 
Imp. Lib. ii. cap. 21. Basilese, 1569. The Legates appointed by the 
Senate met the Emperor at Sutri, and delivered the oration of which 
the sentence just quoted was par<^. It began : ' Urbis legati nos, rex 
optime, ad tuam a Senatu, populoque Romano destinati sumus ex- 
cellentiam,' and contained this remarkable passage: ' Orbis im- 
perium affectas, coronam prsebitura gratanter assurgo, jocanter 
occurro. .- . . indebitum clericorum excussurus jugum.' If the 
words are faithfully reported, the Republic separates itself abruptly 
from the Papacy, and claims a kind of precedence in honor before 
the Empire. Frederick is said to have interrupted the Legates in a 
'•age betore they could finish their address, and to have replied with 
angry contempt. The speech put into his mouth is probably a rhetor 
ical composition, but it may have expressed his sentiments. ' Multa 
de Romanorum sapientia seu fortitudine hactenus audivimus, magis 
tamen de sapientia. Quare satis mirari non possumus, quod verba 
vestra plus arrogantiae tumore insipida quam sale sapientiae condita 
sentimus. . . . Fuit, fuit quondam in hac Republica virtus. Quon- 
dam dico, atque o utinam tarn veraciter quam libenter nunc dicere 
po-„s;_M'.ius,' etc. 



66 J^EN-AFSSAN'CE IN ITALY. 

Strengthened by their contest with Frederick Bar 
barossa, recognized in their rights as belh'gerent pow 
ers, and left to. their own guidance by the Empire, 
the cities were now free to prosecute their wars upon 
the remnants of feudalism. The town, as we have 
learned to know it, was surrounded by a serried rank 
of castles, where the nobles held still undisputed 
authority over serfs of the soil. Against this cor- 
don of fortresses^ every city with singular unanimity 
directed the forces it had formed in the preceding 
conflicts. At the same time the municipal struggles 
of Commune against Commune lost none of their 
virulence. The Counts, pressed on all sides by the 
towns that had grown up around them, adopted the 
policy of pitting one burgh against another. When 
a noble was attacked by the township near his cas- 
tle, he espoused the animosities of a more distant 
city, compromised his independence by accepting the 
captaincy or lieutenancy of communes hostile to his 
natural enemies, and thus became the servant or ally 
of a Republic. In his desperation he emancipated his 
serfs, and so the folk of the Contado profited by the 
dissensions of the cities and their feudal masters. 
lliis new phase of republican evolution lasted over 
a \ong and ill-defined period, assuming different char- 
acters in different centers; but the end of it was that 
the nobles were forced to submit to the cities. They 
were admitted to the burghership, and agreed to 
spend a certain portion of every year in the palaces 
they raised within the circuit of the walls. Thus the 



THE FODESTAS. 67 

Counts placed themselves beneath the jurisdiction of 
the Consuls, and the Italic population absorbed into 
itself the relics of Lombard, Frank, and German aris- 
tocracy. Still the gain upon the side of the repub 
lies was not clear. Though the feudal lordship of 
the nobles had been destroyed, their wealth, their 
lands, and their prestige remained untouched. In 
the city they felt themselves but aliens. Their real 
home was still the castle on the neighboring moun- 
tain. Nor, when they stooped to become burghers, 
had they relinquished the use of arms. Instead of 
building peaceable dwelling-houses in the city, they 
filled its quarters with fortresses and towers, whence 
they carried on feuds among themselves and imper- 
iled the safety of the streets. It was speedily dis- 
covered that the war against the Castles had become 
a war against the Palaces, and that the arena had 
been transferred from the open Contado to the 
Piazza and the barricade. The authority of the 
consuls proved insufficient to maintain an equilib- 
rium between the people and the nobles. Accord- 
ingly a new magistrate started into being, combining 
the offices of supreme justiciary and military dictator. 
When Frederick Barbarossa attempted to govern the 
rebellious Lombard cities in the common interest of 
the Empire, he established in their midst a foreign 
judge, called Podesta quasi habens potestatevi Imper- 
atoris in hdc parte. This institution only served at 
the moment to inflame and imbitter the resistance 
of the Communes: ^nr ^',^r. i^-\f]f. ^f Podestk was sub- 



68 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

sequently conferred upon the official summoned tc 
maintain an equal balance between the burghers and 
the nobles. He was invariably a foreigner, elected 
for one year, intrusted with summary jurisdiction in 
all matters of dispute, exercising the power of life 
and death, and disposing of the municipal militia. 
The old constitution of the Commune remained to 
control this dictator and to guard the independence 
of the city. All the Councils continued to act, and 
the Consuls were fortified by the formation of a 
College of Ancients or Priors. The Podesta was 
created with the express purpose of effecting a syn- 
thesis between two rival sections of the burgh. He 
was never regarded as other than an alien to the 
city, adopted as a temporary mediator and con- 
troller of Incompatible elements. The lordship of 
the burgh still resided with the Consuls, who from 
this time forward began to lose their indivlduallt}- 
in the College of the Signorza — called Priori, An- 
ziani, or Rettori, as the case might be in various 
districts. 

The Italian republics had reached this stage when 
Frederick II. united the Empire and the kingdom 
of the Two Sicilies. It was a crisis of the utmost 
moment for Italian Independence. Master of the 
South, Frederick sought to reconquer the lost pre- 
rogatives of the Empire In Lombardy and Tuscany; 
nor is it Improbable that he might have succeeded in 
uniting Italy beneath his sway but for the violent 
animosltv of the Church. The warfare of extermi- 



GUELFS AND GHIBELLINES. 69 

nation carried on by the Popes against the house of 
Hohenstauflfen was no proof of their partiality for 
the cause of freedom. They dreaded the reality of 
a kingdom that should base itself on Italy and be 
the rival of their own authority. Therefore they 
espoused the cause of the free burghs against Fred- 
erick, and when the North was devastated by his 
Vicars, they preached a crusade against Ezzelino da 
Romano. In the convulsions that shook Italy from 
North to South the parties of Guelf and Ghibelline 
took shape, and acquired an ineradicable force. All 
the previous humors and discords of the nation were 
absorbed by them. The Guelf party meant the 
burghers of the consular Communes, the men of in- 
dustry and commerce, the upholders of civil liberty, 
the friends of democratic expansion. The Ghibel- 
line party included the naturalized nobles, the men 
of arms and idleness, the advocates of feudalism, the 
politicians who regarded constitutional progress with 
disfavor. That the banner of the Church floated 
over the one camp, while the standard of the Em- 
pire rallied to itself the hostile party, was a matter of 
comparatively superficial moment. The true strength 
of the war lay in the population, divided by irrecon- 
cilable ideals, each eager to possess the city for itself, 
each prepared to die for its adopted principles. The 
struggle is a social struggle, played out within the 
precincts of the Commune, for the supremacy of one 
or the other moiety of the whole people. A city 
does not pronounce itself either Guelf or Ghibelline 



70 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

till half the burghers have been exiled. The victo- 
rious party organizes the government in its own in- 
terest, establishes itself in a Palazzo apart from the 
Commune, where It develops its machinery at home 
and abroad, and strengthens its finance by forced 
contributions and confiscations.^ The exiles make 
common cause with members of their own faction 
in an adverse burgh; and thus, by the diplomacy 
of Guelfs and Ghlbelllnes, the most distant centers 
are drawn Into the network of a common dualism. 
In this way we are justified in saying that Italy 
achieved her national consciousness through strife 
and conflict; for the Communes ceased to be isolated 
cemented by temporary leagues, or engaged in merely 
local conflicts. They were brought together and con- 
nected by the sympathies and antipathies of an an- 
tagonism which embraced and dominated the muni- 
cipalltles, set Republics and Regno on equal footing, 
and merged the titular leaders of the struggle. Pope 
and Emperor, In the uncontrollable tumult. The issue 
was no vulgar one; no merely egotistic interests were 
at stake. Guelfs and Ghlbelllnes alike interrogated 
the oracle, with perfect will to obey its Inspiration for 
the common good; but they read the utterances of the 
Pythia In adverse senses. The Ghibelllne heard Italy 
calling upon him to build a citadel that should be 
guarded by the lance and shield of chivalry, where 
the hierarchies of feudalism, ranged beneath the dais 

Mt is enough to refer to the importance of the Parte Guelfa in 
the history of Florence. 



GRADUAL DEMOCRATIZATION, 71 

of the Empire, might dispense culture and civil order 
in due measure to the people. The Guelf believed 
that she was bidding him to multiply arts and guilds 
within the burgh, beneath the mantle of the Pope, 
who stood for Christ, the preacher of equality and 
peace for all mankind, in order that the beehive of 
industry should in course of time evolve a civil order 
and a culture representative of its own freely acting 
forces. 

During the stress and storm of the fierce war- 
fare carried on by Guelfs and Ghibellines, the Podesta 
fell into the second rank. He had been created to 
meet an emergency; but now the discord was too 
vehement for arbitration. A new functionary appears, 
with the title of Captain of the People, Chosen when 
one or other of the factions gains supreme power in 
the burgh, he represents the victorious party, takes 
the lead in proscribing their opponents, and rati- 
fies on his responsibility the changes introduced into 
the constitution. The old magistracies and councils, 
meanwhile, are not abrogated. The Consiglio del 
Popolo, with the Capitano at its head, takes the 
lead; and a new member, called the Consiglio della 
Parte, is found beside them, watchful to maintain 
the policy of the victorious faction. But the Con- 
siglio del Comune, with the Podesta, who has not 
ceased to exercise judicial functions, still subsists. 
The Priors form the signory as of old. The Cre- 
denza goes on working, and the Gran Consiglio rep- 
resents the body of privileged burghers. Tlie party 



72 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

does but tyrannize over the city it has conquered, 
and manipulates the ancient constitution for its own 
advantage. In this clash of Guelf with Ghibelline 
the beneficiaries were the lower classes of the people. 
Excluded from the Popolo of episcopal and consular 
revolutions, the trades and industries of the great 
cities now assert their claims to be enfranchised. 
The advent of the Arti is the chief social phenome- 
non of the crisis.! Thus the final issue of the con- 
flict was a new Italy, deeply divided by factions that 
were little understood, because they were so vital, 
because they represented two adverse currents of 
national energy, incompatible, irreconcilable, eternal 
in antagonism as the poles. But this discordant 
nation was more commercial and more democratic. 
Families of merchants rose upon the ruins of the old 
nobility. Roman cities of industry reduced their mil- 
itary rivals of earlier or later origin to insignificance. 
The plain, the river, and the port asserted themselves 
against the mountain fastness and the barrackburgh. 
The several classes of society, triturated, shaken to- 
gether, leveled by warfare and equalized by industry, 
presented but few obstacles to the emergence of com- 
manding personalities, however humble, from their 
ranks. Not only had the hierarchy of feudalism dis- 
appeared ; but the constitution of the city itself was 
confused, and the Popolo, whether ' primo ' or ' se- 

» The history of Florence illustrates more clearly than that of any 
other town the vast importance acquired by trades and guilds in 
policies at this epoch of the civil wars. 



THE PARTIES. 73 

condo or even *terzo,' was diluted widi recendy en- 
franchised Contadini and all kinds of ' novi homines.' ^ 
The Divine Comedy, written after the culmination of 
the Guelf and Ghibelline dissensions, yields the meas- 
, ure of their animosity. Dante finds no place in Hell, 
Heaven, or Purgatory for the souls who stood aloof 
from strife, the angels who were neither Guelf nor 
Ghibelline in Paradise. His Vigliacchi, ' wretches 
who never lived,' because they never felt the pangs 
or ecstasies of partisanship, wander homeless on the 
skirts of Limbo, among the abortions and offscour- 
ings of creation. Even so there was no standing- 
ground in Italy outside one or the other hostile 
camp. Society was riven down to its foundation. 
Rancors dating from the thirteenth century endured 
long after the great pardes ceased to have a meaning. 
They were perpetuated in customs, and expressed 
themselves in the most trivial details. Banners, en- 
signs, and heraldic colors followed the divisions of 
the factions. Ghibellines wore the feathers in their 
caps upon one side, Guelfs upon the other. Ghib- 

' This is the sting of Cacciaguida's scornful lamentation over 

riorence [Par. xvi.] 

Ma la cittadinanza, ch' 6 or mista 
Di Campi e di Certaldo e di Figghine, 
Pura vedeasi nell' ultimo artista. 

Tal fatto 6 fiorentino, e cambia e merca, 

Che si sarebbe volto a Semifonti, 
Li dove andava 1* avolo alia cerca. 

Sempre la confusione delle persone 
Principio fu del mal della cittade, 
Come del corpo il cibo che s' appone. 



74 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

ellines cut fruit at table crosswise, Guelfs straight 
down. In Bergamo some Calabrians were murdered 
by their host, who discovered from their way of slic- 
ing garlic that they sided with the hostile party. 
Ghibellines drank out of smooth, and Guelfs out of 
chased, goblets. Ghibellines wore white, and Guelfs 
red, roses. Yawning, passing in the street, throwing 
dice, gestures in speaking or swearing, were used as 
pretexts for distinguishing the one half of Italy from 
the other. So late as the middle of the fifteenth cen- 
tury, the Ghibellines of Milan tore Christ from the 
high-altar of the Cathedral at Crema and burned 
him because he turned his face to the Guelf 
shoulder. Every great city has a tale of love and 
death that carries the contention of its adverse 
families into the region of romance and legend. 
Florence dated her calamities from the insult of- 
fered by Buondelmonte dei Buondelmonti to the 
Amidei in a broken marriage. Bologna never for- 
got the pathos of Imelda Lambertazzi stretched in 
death upon her lover Bonifazio Gieremei's corpse. 
The story of Romeo and Juliet at Verona is a 
myth which brings both factions into play, the well- 
meaning intervention of peace-making monks, and 
the ineffectual efforts of the Podesta to curb the 
violence of party warfare. 

So deep and dreadful was the discord, so utter 
the exhaustion, that the distracted Communes were 
fain at last to find some peace in tyranny. At the 
close of their long quarrel with the house of Hohen- 



TYRANNY. 75 

stauffen, the Popes called Charles of Anjou into It- 
aly. The final issue of that policy for the nation at 
large will be discussed in another portion of this work. 
It is enough to point out here that, as Ezzelino da 
Romano introduced despotism in its worst form as a 
party leader of the Ghibellines, so Charles of Anjou 
became a typical tyrant in the Guelf interest. He 
was recognized as chief of the Guelf party by the 
Florentines, and the kingdom of the Two Sicilies was 
conferred upon him as the price of his dictatorship. 
The republics almost simultaneously entered upon a 
new phase. Democratized by the extension of the 
franchise, corrupted, to use Machlavelli's phrase, in 
their old organization of the Popolo and Commune, 
they fell into the hands of tyrants, who employed the 
prestige of their party, the indifference of the Vig- 
liacchi, and the peace-loving Instincts of the middle 
class for the consolidation of their selfish autocracy.^ 
Placing himself above the law, manipulating the ma- 
chinery of the State for his own ends, substituting the 
will of a single ruler for the clash of hostile passions 
In the factions, the tyrant imposed a forcible tranquil- 
lity upon the city he had grasped. The Captaincy 



• Not to mention the republics of Lombardy and Romagna, which 
took the final stamp of despotism at the beginning of the fourteenth 
century, it is noticeable that Pisa submitted to Uguccione da Fag- 
giuola, Lucca to Castruccio Castracane, and Florence to the Duke 
of Athens. The revolution of Pisa in 1316 delivered it from Uguc- 
cione; the premature death of Castruccio in 1328 destroyed the 
Tuscan duchy he was building up upon the basement of Ghibellin- 
ism; while the rebellion of 134.3 averted tyranny from Florence for 
another century. 



76 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

of the people was conferred upon him.^ The Coun- 
cils were suffocated and reduced to silence. The 
aristocracy was persecuted for the profit of the plebs. 
Under his rule commerce flourished; the towns were 
adorned with splendid edifices; foreign wars were car- 
ried on for the aggrandizement of the State without 
regard to factious rancors. Thus the tyrant marked 
the first emergence of personality supreme within the 
State, resuming its old forces in an autocratic will, 
superseding and at the same time consciously con- 
trolling the mute, collective, blindly working impulses 
of previous revolutions. His advent was welcomed 
as a blessing by the recently developed people of the 
cities he reduced to peace. But the great families 
and leaders of the parties regarded him with loathing, 
as a reptile spawned by the corruption and disease of 
the decaying body politic. In their fury they ad- 
dressed themselves to the two chiefs of Christendom. 
Boniface VIII., answering to this appeal, called in a 
second Frenchman, Charles of Valois, with the titles 
of Marquis of Ancona, Count of Romagna, Captain 
of Tuscany, who was bidden to reduce Italy to order 
on Guelf principles. Dante in his mountain solitudes 
Invoked the Emperor, and Italy beheld the powerless 
march of Henry VII. Neither Pope nor Emperor 
was strong enough to control the currents of the fac- 

» Machiavelli's Vita di Castruccio Castracane, though it is rather 
a historical romance than a trustworthy biography, illustrates the 
gradual advances made by a bold and ambitious leader from the 
Captaincy of the people, conferred upon him for one year, to the tyr- 
anny of his city. 



DESPOTISM. 77 

tions which were surely whirling Italy Into the abyss 
of despotism. Boniface died of grief after Sclarra 
Colonna, the terrible Ghlbelllne s outrage at Anagni, 
and the Papal Court was transferred to Avignon In 
1 316. Henry VII. expired, of poison probably, at 
Buonconvento, In 13 13. The parties tore each otlier 
to fragments. Tyrants were murdered. Whole fam- 
ilies were extirpated. Yet these convulsions bore no 
fruit of liberty. The only exit from the situation was 
in despotism — the despotism of a jealous oligarchy as 
at Florence, or the despotism of new tyrants in Lom- 
bardy and the Romagna.^ 

Meanwhile the perils to which the tyrants were 
exposed taught them to employ cruelty and craft in 
combination. From the confused and spasmodic ef- 
forts of the thirteenth century, when Captains of the 
people and leaders of the party seized a momentary 
gust of power, there arose a second sort of despotism, 
more cautious in its policy, more methodic In Its use 
of means to ends, which ended by metamorphosing 
the Italian cities and preparing the great age of th^' 
Renaissahce. It would be sentimental to utter lam 
entatlons over this change, and unphilosophical to dc- 

» The Divine comedy is, under one of its aspects, the Epic of 
Italian tyranny, so many of its episodes are chosen from the history 
of the civil wars ; 

Ch6 le terre d' Italia tutte piene 
Son di tiranni; ed un Marcel diventa 
Ogni villan che parteggiando viene. 

These lines occur in the apostrophe to Italy iPurg. vi.) where Dante 
refers to the Empire, idealized by him as the supreme authority in 
Europe. 



78 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

plore the diminution of republican liberty as an un- 
mixed evil. The divisions of Italy and the weakness 
of both Papacy and Empire left no other solution of 
the political problem. All brandies of the municipal 
administration, strained to the cracking-point by the 
tension of party conflict, were now isolated from the 
organism, abnormally developed, requiring the com- 
bining effort of a single thinker to reunite their scat - 
tered forces in one system or absorb them in himself. 
The indirect restraints which a calmer period of mu- 
nicipal vitality had placed upon tyrannic ambition, 
were removed by the leveling of classes and the 
presentation of an equal surface to the builder of the 
palace-dome of monarchy. Moreover, it must be re- 
membered that what the Italians then understood by 
freedom was municipal autonomy controlled by ruling 
houses in the interest of the few. These considera- 
tions need not check our sympathy with Florence in 
the warfare she carried on against the Milanese ty- 
rants. But they should lead us to be cautious in 
adopting the conclusions of Sismondi, who saw Ital- 
ian greatness only in her free cities. The oblitera- 
tion of the parties beneath despotism was needed, 
under actual conditions, for that development of arts 
and industry which raised Italy to a first place among 
civilized nations. Of the manners of the Despots, 
and of the demoralization they encouraged in the 
cities of their rule, enough will be said in the suc- 
ceeding chapters, which set forth the social conditions 
of the Renaissance in Italv. But attention should 



INFLUENCE OF THE DESPOTS, 79 

here be called to the general character of despotic 
authority, and to the influence the Despots exercised 
for the pacification of the country. We are not jus- 
tified by facts in assuming that had the free burghs 
continued independent, arts and literature would have 
risen to a greater height. Venice, in spite of an un- 
interrupted republican career, produced no command- 
ing men of letters, and owed much of her splendor in 
the art of painting to aliens from Cadore, Castel- 
franco, and Verona. Genoa remained silent and ir- 
responsive to the artistic movement of Italy until the 
last days of the republic, when her independence was 
but a shadow. Pisa, though a burgh of Tuscany, 
displayed no literary talent, while her architecture 
dates from the first period of the Commune. Siena, 
whose republican existence lasted longer even than 
that of Florence, contributed nothing of importance 
to Italian literature. The art of Perugia was devel- 
oped during the ascendency of despotic families. 
The painting of the Milanese School owed its origin 
to Lodovico Sforza, and survived the tragic catas- 
trophes of his capital, which suffered more than any 
other from the brutalities of Spaniards and French- 
men. Next to Florence, the most brilliant centers of 
literary activity during the bright days of the Re- 
naissance were princely Ferrara and royal Naples. 
Lastly, we might insist upon the fact that the Italian 
language took its first flight in the court of imperial 
Palermo, while republican Rome remained dumb 
throughout the earlier stage of Italian literary evolu- 



8o RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

tion. Thus the facts of the case seem to show that 
culture and republican independence were not so 
closely united in Italy as some historians would seek 
to make us believe. On the other hand it is impos- 
sible to prove that the despotisms of the fifteenth 
century were necessary to the perfecting of art and 
literature. All that can be safely advanced upon this 
subject, is that the pacification of Italy was demanded 
as a preliminary condition, and that this pacification 
came to pass through the action of the princes, 
checked and equilibrated by the oligarchies of 
Venice and Florence. It might further be urged 
that the Despots were in close sympathy with the 
masses of the people, shared their enthusiasms, and 
promoted their industry. When the classical revival 
took place at the close of the fourteenth century, they 
divined this movement of the Italic races to resume 
their past, and gave It all encouragement. To be a 
prince, and not to be the patron of scholarship, the 
pupil of humanists, and the founder of libraries, was 
an impossibility. In like manner they employed their 
wealth upon the development of arts and Industries. 
The great age of Florentine painting is Indlssolubly 
connected with the memories of Casa Medici. Rome 
owes her magnificence to the despotic Popes. Even 
the pottery of Gubbio was a creation of the ducal 
house of Urblno. 

After the death of Henry VII. and the beginning 
of the Papal exile at Avignon, the Guelf party became 
die rallying-point of municipal Independence, with its 



POLICY OF DESPOTS. 8l 

headquarters in Florence. Ghibellinism united the 
princes in an opposite camp. *The Guelf party/ 
writes Giovanni Villani, ' forms the solid and unalter- 
able basis of Italian liberty, and is so antagonistic to 
all tyranny that, if a Guelf become a tyrant, he must 
of necessity become at the same moment Ghibelline.* 
Milan, first to assert the rights of the free burghs, was 
now the chief center of despotism; and the events of 
the next century resume themselves in the long strug- 
gle between Florence and the Visconti. The chronicle 
of the Villani and the Florentine history of Poggio 
contain the record of this strife, which seemed to them 
the all-important crisis of Italian affairs. In the Mi- 
lanese annals of Galvano Fiamma and Mussi, on the 
other hand, the advantages of a despotic sovereignty 
tn giving national coherence, the crimes of the Papacy, 
which promoted anarchy in its ill-governed States, 
and the prospect of a comprehensive Italian tyranny 
under the great house of the Visconti, are eloquently 
pleaded. The terms of the main issue being thus 
clearly defined, we may regard the warfare carried on 
by Bertrand du Poiet and Louis of Bavaria in the 
inlerests of Church and Empire, the splendid cam- 
paigns of Egidio d'Albornoz, and the delirious cruelty 
of Robert of Geneva, no less than the predatory 
excursions of Charles IV., as episodical. The main 
profits of those convulsions, which drowned Italy in 
blood during nearly all the fourteenth century, accrued 
to the Despots, who held their ground in spite of all 
attempts to dispossess them. The greater houses. 



■ i* RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

notably the Visconti, acquired strength by revolu- 
tions in which the Church and Empire neutralized 
each other's action.' The lesser families struck firm 
roots into cities, infuriated rather than intimidated by 
such acts of violence as the massacres of Faenza and 
Cesena in 1377. The relations of the imperial and 
pontifical parties were confused; while even in the 
center of republican independence, at Florence, social 
changes, determined in great measure by the exhaus- 
tion of the city in its conflict, prepared the way for 
the Medicean tyranny. Neither the Church nor the 
Empire gained steady footing in Italy, while the 
prestige of both was ruined.^ Municipal freedom, 
instead of being enlarged, was extinguished by the 
ambition of the Florentine oligarchs, who, while they 
spent the last florin of the Commune in opposing the 
Visconti, never missed an opportunity of enslaving 
the sister burghs of Tuscany. In a word, the des- 
tiny of the nation was irresistibly impelling it toward 
despotism. 

In order to explain the continual prosperity of the 
princes amid the clash of forces brought to bear 
against them from so many sides, we must remember 
that they were the partisans of social order in dis- 

1 Machiavelli, in his Istorie Florentine (Firenze, 1818, vol. i. pp. 
47, 48), points out how the competition of the Church and Empire, 
during the Papacies of Benedict XII. and Clement VI. and the reign 
ot Louis strengthened the tyrants of Lombardy, Romagna, and tho 
March. Each of the two contending powers gave away what dia 
not belong to them, bidding against each other for any support they 
might obtain from the masters of the towns 



THEIR PROSPERITY, 83 

tracted burghs, the heroes of the middle classes and 
the multitude, the quellers of faction, the administra- 
tors of impartial laws, and the aggrandlzers of the 
city at the expense of Its neighbors. Ser Gorello, 
singing the praises of the Bishop Guldo dei Tarlati di 
Pletra Mala, who ruled Arezzo In the first half of the 
fourteenth century, makes the Commune say:^ * He 
was the lord so valiant and magnificent, so full of 
grace and daring, so agreeable to both Guelfs and 
Ghlbelllnes. He, for his virtue, was chosen by com- 
mon consent to be the master of my people. Peace 
and justice were the beginning, middle, and end of 
his lordship, which removed all discord from the State. 
By the greatness of his valor I grew in territory round 
about. Every neighbor reverenced me, some through 
love and some through dread; for it was dear to them 
to rest beneath his mantle.' These verses set forth 
the qualities which united the mass of the populations 
to their new lords. The Despot delivered the indus- 
trial classes from the tyranny and anarchy of faction, 
substituting a reign of personal terrorism that weighed 
more heavily upon the nobles than upon the artisans 
or peasants. Ruling more by perfidy, corruption, and 
fraud than by the sword, he turned the leaders of 
parties into courtiers, brought proscribed exiles back 
into the city as officials, flattered local vanity by con 
tinning the municipal machinery in its functions of 



» Mur, Scr. R, It. xv. 826. Compare what G. Merula wrote aboU 
Azzo Visconti : ' He conciliated the people to him by equal justice 

without distinction ofGuelf or Ghibelline.' 



84 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

parade, and stopped the mouths of unruly dema 
gogues by making it their pecuniary interest tc 
preach his benefits abroad. So long as the burghers 
remained peaceable beneath his sway and refrained 
from attacking him in person, he was mild. But at the 
sune moment the gallows, the torture-chamber, the 
iron cage suspended from the giddy height of palace- 
roof or church tower, and the dreadful dungeons, 
where a prisoner could neither stand nor lie at ease, 
were ever ready for the man who dared dispute his 
authority. That authority depended solely on his 
personal qualities of will, courage, physical endurance. 
He held it by intelligence, being as it were an artifi- 
cial product of political necessities, an equilibrium of 
forces, substituted without legal title for the Church 
and Empire, and accumulating in his despotic indi- 
viduality the privileges previously acquired by cen- 
turies of consuls, Podestas, and Captains of the 
people. The chief danger he had to fear was 
conspiracy; and in providing himself against this 
peril he expended all the resources suggested by re- 
fined ingenuity and heightened terror. Yet, when the 
Despot was attacked and murdered, it followed of ne- 
cessity that the successful conspirator became in turn 
a tyrant. ' Cities,' wrote Machiavelli,^ * that are once 
corrupt and accustomed to the rule of princes, can 
never acquire freedom, even though the prince with 
all his kin be extirpated. One prince is needed to 
extinguish another; and the city has no rest except 

« ViscortH L X7. 



NATIONAL DISARMAMENT. 85 

by the creation of a new lord, unless it chance that 
one burgher by his goodness and great qualities may 
during his lifetime preserve its temporary independ- 
ence.' Palace intrigues, therefore, took the place of 
Piazza revolutions, and dynasties were swept away to 
make room for new tyrants without material change 
in the condition of the populace. 

It was the universal policy of the Despots to dis- 
arm their subjects. Prompted by considerations of 
personal safety, and demanded by the necessity of 
extirpating the factions, this measure was highly pop- 
ular. It relieved the burghers of that most burden- 
some of all public duties, military service. A tax 
on silver and salt was substituted in the Milanese 
province for the conscription, while the Florentine 
oligarchs, actuated probably by the same motives, 
laid a tax upon the country. The effect of this 
change was to make financial and economical ques- 
tions all-important, and to introduce a new element 
into the balance of Italian powers. The principali- 
ties were transformed into great banks, where the 
lords of cities sat in their bureau, counted their 
money, and calculated the cost of wars or the value 
of towns they sought to acquire by bargain. At 
first they used their mercenary troops like pawns, 
buying up a certain number for some special pro- 
ject, and dismissing them when it had been ac- 
complished. But in course of time the mercenaries 
awoke to the sense of their own power, and placed 
themselves beneath captains who secured them a 



86 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

certainty of pay with continuity of profitable ser- 
vice. Thus the Condottieri came into existence, 
and Italy beheld the spectacle of moving despot- 
isms, armed and mounted, seeking to effect estab- 
lishment upon the weakest, worst-defended points 
of the peninsula. They proved a grave cause of 
disquietude alike to the tyrants and the republics; 
and until the settlement of Francesco Sforza in the 
Duchy of Milan, when the employers of auxiliaries 
had come to understand the arts of dealing with 
them by perfidy, secret assassination, and a system 
of elaborate counter-checks, the equilibrium of power 
in Italy was seriously threatened. The country suf- 
fered at first from marauding excursions conducted 
by piratical leaders of adventurous troops, by Werner 
of Urslingen, the Conte Lando, and Fra Moriale; 
afterwards from the discords of Braccio da Montone 
and Sforza Attendolo, incessantly plotting to carve 
duchies for themselves from provinces they had been 
summoned by a master to subdue. At this period 
gold ruled the destinies of Italy. The Despots, re- 
lying solely on their exchequer for their power, 
were driven to extortion. Cities became bankrupt, 
pledged their revenues, or sold themselves to the 
highest bidder.'^ Indescribable misery oppressed the 
poorer classes and the peasants. A series of obscure 
revolutions in the smaller despotic centers pointed to 

» Perugia, for example, farmed out the tax upon her country pop- 
ulation for 12, OCX) florins, upon her baking-houses for 7,266, upon her 
wine for 4,000 upon her lake for 5,200, upon contracts for 1,500. 
Two bankers accepted the Peruijian loan at this price in 1388. 



THE CUl^DOTTIERI. 87 

a vehement plebeian reaction against a state of things 
that had become unbearable. The lower classes of the 
burghers rose against the ' popolani grassi,' and a 
new class of princes emerged at the close of the 
crisis. Thus the plebs forced the Bentivogli on 
Bologna and the Medici on Florence, and Baglioni 
on Perucria and the Petrucci on Siena. 

o 

The emergence of the Condottieri at the begin 
ning of the fourteenth century, the anarchy they en- 
couraged for their own aggrandizement, and the finan- 
cial distress which ensued upon the substitution of 
mercenary for civic warfare, completed the democrati- 
zation of the Italian cities, and marked a new period 
in the history of despotism. From the date of Fran- 
cesco Sforza's entry into Milan as conqueror in 1450, 
the princes became milder in their exercise of power 
and less ambitious. Having begun by disarming 
their subjects, they now proceeded to lay down arms 
themselves, employing small forces for the protection 
of their person and the State, engaging more cau- 
tiously in foreign strife, and substituting diplomacy, 
wherever it was possible, for warfare. Gold still 
ruled in politics, but it was spent in bribery. To the 
ambitious military schemes of Gian Galeazzo Visconti 
succeeded the commercial cynicism of Cosimo de* 
Medici, who enslaved Florence by astute demoraliza- 
tion.i The spirit of the age was materialistic and 
positive. The Despots held their state by treachery, 

» I have attempted to analyze Cosimo's method in the article on 
'Florence and the Medici.' Studies and Sketches in Italy. 



88 RENAISSANCE /A ITAIA 

craft, and corruption. The element of force being 
virtually eliminated, intelligence at last gained undi- 
vided sway; and the ideal statecraft of Machiavelli 
was realized with more or less completeness in all 
parts of the peninsula. At this moment and by these 
means Italy obtained a brief but golden period of 
peace beneath the confederation of her great powers. 
Nicholas V. had restored the Papal court to Rome in 
1447; where he assumed the manners of despotism 
and counted as one among the Italian Signori. Lom- 
bardy remained tranquil under the rule of Francesco 
Sforza, and Tuscany under that of the Casa Medici. 
The kingdom of Naples, conquered by Alfonso of 
Aragon in 1442, was equally ruled in the spirit of 
enlightened despotism, while Venice, who had so 
long formed a state apart, by her recent acquisition 
of a domain on terra firma, entered the community 
of Italian politics. Thus the country had finally re- 
solved itself into five grand constituent elements — 
the Duchy of Milan, the Republic of S. Mark, Flor- 
ence, Rome, and the kingdom of Naples — all of 
them, though widely differing in previous history an I 
constitutional peculiarities, now animated by a com -' 
mon spirit.^ Politically they tended to despotism; for 
though Venice continued to be a republic, the gov- 
ernment of the Venetian oligarchy was but despotism 

' This centralization of Italy in five great powers was not ob- 
tained without the depression or total extinction of smaller cities. 
Ferrari counts seventeen towns, who died, to use his forcible expres- 
sion at the close of the civil wars. Storia delU Rivolusioni tt 
Italia, iii. 239. 



THE FIVE ITALIAN STATES. 89 

put into commission. Intellectually, the same enthu- 
siasm for classical studies, the same artistic energy, 
and the same impulse to revive Italian literature 
brought the several centers of the nation into keener 
sympathy than they had felt before. A network of 
diplomacy embraced the cities; and round the lead- 
ers of the confederation were grouped inferior burghs, 
republican or tyrannical as the case might be, like 
satellites around the luminaries of a solar system. 
When Constantinople was taken by the Turks in 
1453, Italy felt the need of suppressing her old jeal- 
ousies, and Nicholas V. induced the four great powers 
to sign with him a treaty of peace and amity. The 
political tact and sagacity of Lorenzo de' Medici en- 
abled him to develop and substantiate the principle of 
balance then introduced into Italian politics; nor was 
there any apparent reason why the equilibrium so 
hardly won, so skillfully maintained, should not have 
subsisted but for Lodovico Sforza's invitation to the 
French in 1494. Up to that date the more recent 
wars of Italy had been principally caused by the en- 
croachments of Venice and the nepotism of successive 
Popes. They raised no new enthusiasm hostile to the 
interests of peace. The Empire was eliminated and 
forgotten as an obsolete antiquity. Italy seemed at 
last determined to manage her own affairs by mu- 
tual agreement between the five great powers. 

Still the ground beneath this specious fabric of 
diplomacy rung hollow. The tyrannies represented 
a transient political necessity. They were not the 



90 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

product of progressive social growth, satisfying and 
regulating organic functions of the nation. Far from 
being the final outcome of a slow, deliberate accretion 
in the states they had absorbed, we see in them the 
climax of conflicting humors, the splendid cancers and 
imposthumes of a desperate disease. That solid basis 
of national morality which grounds the monarch firm 
upon the sympathies and interests of the people whom 
he seems to lead, but whom he in reality expresses, 
failed them. Therefore each individual despot trem- 
bled for his throne, while Italy, as in the ominous 
picture drawn by her historian, felt that all the ele- 
ments were combining to devour her with a coming 
storm. The land of earthquakes divined a cataclysm, 
to cope with which she was unable. An apparently 
insignificant event determined the catastrophe. The 
Sforza appealed to France, and after the disastrous 
descent of Charles VIII. the whole tide of events 
turned. Instead of internal self-government by any 
system of balance, Italy submitted to a succession of 
invasions terminating in foreign tyranny. 

The problem why the Italians failed to achieve 
the unity of a coherent nation has been implicitly dis- 
cussed In the foregoing pages upon the history of the 
Communes and the development of despotism. We 
have already seen that their conception of municipal 
Independence made a narrow oligarchy of enfranchised 
burghers lords of the city, which in its turn oppressed 
the country and the subject burghs of its domain. 
Every conquest by a republic reduced some village or 



FAILURE TO ATTAIN REPUBLICAN UNITY. 91 

center of civil life to the condition of serfdom. The 
voices of the inhabitants were no longer heard debat- 
ing questions that affected their interests. They sub- 
mitted to dictation from their masters, the enfranchised 
few in the ascendant commonwealth. Thus, as Guic- 
ciardini pointed out in his 'Considerations on the 
Discourses of Machiavelli,' the subjection of Italy by 
a dominant republic would have meant the extinction 
of numberless political communities and the sway of 
a close oligarchy from the Alps to the Ionian Sea.^ 
The 3,200 burghers who constituted Florence in 1494, 
or the nobles of the Golden Book at Venice, would 
by such unification of the country under a victorious 
republic have become sovereigns, administering the 
resources of the nation for their profit. The dread 
of this catastrophe rendered Venice odious to her 
sister commonwealths at the close of the fifteenth 
century, and justified, according to Guicciardini's 
views of history, the action taken by Cosimo de* 
Medici in 1460, when he rendered Milan strong by 
supporting her despot, Francesco Sforza.^ In a word 
republican freedom, as the term is now understood, 
was unknown in Italy. Municipal autonomy, imply- 
ing the right of the municipality to rule its conquests 
for its own particular profit, was the dominant idea. 
To have advanced from this stage of thought to the 
highly developed conception of a national republic, 
centralizing the forces of Italy and at the same time 
giving free play to its local energies, would have been 

* Op. Ined, vol. i. p. 28. « lb. vol. iii. p. 8. 



93 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

impossible. This kind of republican unity implies a 
previous unification of the people in some other form 
of government. It furthermore demands a system of 
representation extended to all sections of the nation. 
Their very nature, therefore, prevented the repub- 
lican institutions won by the Italians in the early 
Middle Ages from sufficing for their independence 
in a national republic. 

It may with more reason be asked in the next 
place why Italy did not become a monarchy, and 
again why she never produced a confederation, unit- 
ing the Communes as the Swiss Cantons were com- 
bined for mutual support and self-defense. When 
we attack the first of these two questions, our im- 
mediate answer must be that the Italians had a 
rooted disinclination for monarchical union.^ Their 
most strenuous efforts were directed against it when 
it seemed to threaten them. It may be remembered 
that they were not a new people, needing concen- 
tration to secure their bare existence. Even during 
the great days of ancient Rome they had not been 
what we are wont to call a nation, but a confederacy 
of municipalities governed and directed by the mis- 



' Guicciardini {Op. Ined. i. 29) remarks: 'O sia per qualche fato 
d' Italia, o per la complessione degli uomini temperata in modo che 
hanno ingegno e forze, non k mai questa provincia stata facile a 
ridursi sotto uno imperio.' He speaks again of her disunion as 
•quello modo di vivere che ^ piil secondo la antiquissima consue- 
tudine e inclinazione sua.* But Guicciardini, with that defect of vis- 
ion which rendered him incapable of appreciating the whole situa- 
tion while he analyzed its details so profoundly, was reckoning 
without the great nations of Europe. See above, pp. 40, 41. 



MONARCHICAL UNITY. 93 

tress of the globe. When Rome passed away, the 
fragments of the body politic in Italy, though rudely 
shaken, retained some portion of the old vitality that 
joined them to the past. It was to the past rather 
than the future that the new Italians looked; and 
even as they lacked initiative forces in their litera- 
ture, so in their political systems they ventured on 
no fresh beginning. Though Rome herself was 
ruined, the shadow of the name of Rome, the 
mighty memory of Roman greatness, still abode 
with them. Instead of a modern capital and a 
modern king, they had an idea for their rally ing- 
point, a spiritual city for their metropolis. Nor was 
there any immediate reason why they should have 
sacrificed their local independence in order to obtain 
the security afforded by a sovereign. It was not till 
a later epoch that Italy learned by bitter experience 
that unity at any cost would be acceptable, face to 
face with the organized armies of modern Europe. 
But when the chance of securing that safeguard was 
offered in the Middle Ages, it must have been 
bought by subjection to foreigners, by toleration of 
feudalism, by the extinction of Roman culture in 
the laws and customs of barbarians. Thus it is not 
too much to say that the Italians themselves re- 
jected it. Moreover, the problem of unifying Italy 
in a monarchy was never so practically simple as 
that of forming nations out of the Teutonic tribes. 
Not only was the instinct of clanship absent, but 
before the year 800 all attempts to establish a mon - 



94 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

archical state were thwarted by the still formidable 
proximity of the Greek Empire and by the growing 
power of ecclesiastical Rome. We have seen how 
the Goths erred by submitting to the Empire and 
merging their authority in a declining organization. 
We have seen again how the Lombards erred by 
adopting Catholic Christianity and thus entangling 
themselves in the policy of Papal Rome. Both 
Goths and Lombards committed the mistake of 
sparing the Eternal City; or it may be more accu- 
rate to say that neither of them were strong enough 
to lay hands of violence upon the sacred and mys- 
terious metropolis and hold it as their seat of mon- 
archy against the world. So long as Rome re- 
mained independent, neither Ravenna nor Pavia 
could head a kingdom in the peninsula. Mean- 
while Rome lent her prestige to the advancement 
of a spiritual power which, subject to no dynastic 
weakness, with the persistent force of an idea that 
cannot die, was bent on subjugating Europe. The 
Papacy needed Italy as the basis of its operations, 
and could not brook a rival that might reduce the 
See of S. Peter to the level of an ordinary bish- 
opric. Rome therefore, generation after generation, 
upheld the so-called liberties of Italy against all 
comers; and when she summoned the Franks, it 
was to break the growing power of the Lombard 
monarchs. The pact between the Popes and Charles 
the Great, however we may interpret its meaning, 
still further removed the possibility of a kingdom 



DIFFICULTIES OF CONFEDERATION. 95 

by dividing Italy into two sections with separate 
allegiances; and since the sway of neither Pope nor 
Emperor, the one unarmed, the other absent, was 
stringent enough to check the growth of independ- 
ent cities, a third and all-important factor was added 
to the previous checks upon national unity. 

After 1200 the problem changes its aspect. We 
have now to ask ourselves why, when the struggle 
with the Empire was over, when Frederick Barba- 
rossa had been defeated at Legnano, when the Lom- 
bard and the Tuscan Leagues were in full vigor 
before the Guelf and Ghibelline factions had con- 
fused the mainsprings of political activity, and while 
the national militia was still energetic, the Communes 
did not advance from the conception of local and 
municipal independence to that of national freedom 
in a confederacy similar to the Swiss Bund. The 
Italians, it may be suggested, saw no immediate 
necessity for a confederation that would have lim- 
ited the absolute autonomy of their several parcels. 
Only the light cast by subsequent events upon their 
early history makes us perceive that they missed an 
unique opportunity at this moment. What they then 
desired was freedom for expansion each after his own 
political type, freedom for the development of indus- 
try and commerce, freedom for the social organiza- 
tion of the city beloved by its burghers above the 
nation as a whole. Special difficulties, moreover, lay 
in the way of confederation. The Communes were 
not districts, like the Swiss Cantons, but towns at 



90 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

war with the Contado round them and at war among 
themselves. Mutually jealous and mistrustful, with a 
country population that but partially obeyed their 
rule, these centers of Italian freedom were in a very 
different position from the peasant communities of 
Schwytz, Uri, Unterwalden. Italy, moreover, could 
not have been federally united without the consent 
of Naples and the Church. The kingdom of the 
Two Sicilies, rendered definitely monarchical by the 
Norman Conquest, offered a serious obstacle; and 
though the Regno might have been defied and ab- 
sorbed by a vigorous concerted movement from the 
North and center, there still remained the opposition 
of the Papacy. It had been the recent policy of the 
Popes to support the free burghs in their war with 
Frederick. But they did this only because they could 
not tolerate a rival near their base of spiritual power ; 
and the very reasons which had made them side with 
the cities in the wars of liberation would have roused 
their hostility against a federative union. To have 
encouraged an Italian Bund, in the midst of which 
they would have found the Church unarmed and on 
a level with the puissant towns of Lombardy and 
Tuscany, must have seemed to them a suicidal error. 
Such a coalition, if attempted, could not but have 
been opposed with all their might; for the whole 
history of Italy proves that Machiavelli was right 
when he asserted that the Church had persistendy 
maintained the nation in disunion for the furtherance 
of her own selfish ends. We have furthermore to 



RESULT. 97 

add the prestige which the Empire preserved for 
the Italians, who failed to conceive of any civilized 
human society whereof the representative of Caesar 
should not be the God-appointed head. Though the 
material power of the Emperors was on the wane, it 
still existed as a dominant idea. Italy was still the 
Garden of the Empire no less than the Throne of 
Christ on earth. After the burghs had wrung what 
they regarded as their reasonable rights and privi- 
leges from Frederick, they laid down their arms, and 
were content to flourish beneath the imperial shadow. 
To raise up a political association as a bulwark against 
the Holy Roman Empire, and by the formation of 
this defense to become an independent and united 
nation, instead of remaining an aggregate of scat- 
tered townships, would have seemed to their minds 
little short of sacrilege. Up to this point the Church 
and the Empire had been, theoretically at least, con- 
cordant. They were the sun and moon of a sacred 
social system which ruled Europe with light and might 
But the Wars of Investiture placed them in antago- 
nism, and the result of that quarrel was still further 
to divide the Italians, still further to remove the hope 
of national unity into the region of things unattain- 
able. The great parties accentuated communal jeal- 
ousies and gave external form and substance to the 
struggles of town with town. So far distant was 
the possibility of confederation on a grand scale that 
every city strove within itself to establish one of two 
contradictory principles, and the energies of the peo- 



98 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

pie were expended in a struggle that set neighbor 
against neighbor on the field of war and in the 
market-place. The confusion, exhaustion, and de- 
moralization engendered by these conflicts deter- 
mined the advent of the Despots; and after 1400 
Italy could only have been united under a tyrant's 
iron rule. At such an universal despotism Gian 
Galeazzo Visconti was aiming when the plague cut 
short his schemes. Cesare Borgia played his highest 
stakes for it. Leo X. dreamed of it for his family. 
Machiavelli, at the end of the Principe, when the 
tragedy of Italy was almost accomplished, invoked 
it. But even for this last chance of unification it was 
now too late. The great nations of Europe were in 
movement, and the destinies of Italy depended upon 
France and Spain. When Charles V. remained victor 
in the struggle of the sixteenth century, he stereo- 
typed and petrified the divisions of Italy in the in- 
terest of his own dynastic policy. The only Italian 
power that remained unchangeable throughout all 
changes was the Papacy — the first to emerge into 
prominence after the decay of the old Western Em- 
pire, the last to suffer diminution in spite of vicissi- 
tudes, humiliations, schisms, and internal transforma- 
tion. As the Papacy had created and maintained a 
divided Italy, as it had opposed itself to every succes- 
sive prospect of unification, so it survived the extinction 
of Italian independence, and lent its aid to that impe- 
rial tyranny whereby the disunion of the nation was 
confirmed and prolongated till the present century. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE AGE OF THE DESPOTS. 

Salient Qualities ot the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries in Italy — 
Relation of Italy to the Empire and to the Church — The Illegiti- 
mate Title of Italian Potentates — The Free Emergence of Per- 
sonality — Frederick II. and the Influence of his Example — 
Ezzelino da Romano — Six Sorts of Italian Despots — Feudal 
Seigneurs — Vicars of the Empire — Captains of the People — 
Condottieri — Nephews and Sons of Popes — Eminent Burghers — 
Italian Incapacity for Self-Government in Commonwealths — 
Forcible Tenure of Power encouraged Personal Ability — The 
Condition of the Despot's Life — Instances of Domestic Crime in 
the Ruling Houses — Macaulay's Description of the Italian Tyrant 
— Savonarola's and Matteo Villani's Description of a Tyrant — The 
Absorption of Smaller by Greater Tyrannies in the Fourteenth 
Century — History of the Viscontr — Francesco Sforza — The Part 
played in Italian Politics by Military Leaders — Mercenary War- 
fare — Alberico da. Barbiano, Braccio da Montone, Sforza Atten- 
dolo — History of the Sforza Dynasty — The Murder of Galeazzo 
Maria Sforza — The Ethics of Tyrannicide in Italy — Relation of 
the Despots to Arts and Letters — Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta 
— Duke Federigo of Urbino — The School of Vittorino and the 
Court of Urbino — The Cortegiano of Castiglione — The Ideals of 
the Italian Courtier and the Modem Gentleman — General Ret- 
rospect. 

The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries may be called 
the Age of the Despots in Italian history, as the 
twelfth and thirteenth are the Age of the Free Burghs, 
and as the sixteenth and seventeenth are the Age of 
Foreign Enslavement. It was during the age of the 
Despots that the conditions of the Renaissance were 
evolved, and that the Renaissance itself assumed a 



lOO I^ENA/SSANCE IN ITALY, 

definite character in Italy. Under tyrannies, in the 
midst of intrigues, wars, and revolutions, the peculiar 
individuality of the Italians obtained its ultimate de- 
velopment. This individuality, as remarkable for sa- 
lient genius and diffused talent as for self-conscious 
and deliberate vice, determined the qualities of the 
Renaissance and affected by example the whole of 
Europe. Italy led the way in the education of the 
Western races, and was the first to realize the type 
of modern as distinguished from classical and mediae- 
val life. 

During this age of the despots, Italy presents the 
spectacle of a nation devoid of central government 
and comparatively uninfluenced by feudalism. The 
right of the Emperor had become nominal, and served 
as a pretext for usurpers rather than as a source of 
order. The visits, for instance, of Charles IV. and 
Frederick III. were either begging expeditions or hol- 
iday excursions, in the course of which ambitious ad- 
venturers bought titles to the government of towns, 
and meaningless honors were showered upon vain 
courtiers. It was not till the reign of Maximilian 
that Germany adopted a more serious policy with re- 
gard to Italy, which by that time had become the 
central point of European intrigue. Charles V. after- 
wards used force to reassert imperial rights over the 
Italian cities, acting not so much in the interest of the 
Empire as for the aggrandizement of the Spanish 
monarchy. At the same time the Papacy, which had 
done so much to undermine the authority of the Em- 



EMPEROR AND POPE. lOI 

pire, exercised a power at once anomalous and ill- 
recognized except in the immediate States of the 
Church. By the extinction of the House of Hohen- 
stauffen and by the assumed right to grant the inves- 
titure of the kingdom of Naples to foreigners, the 
Popes not only struck a death-blow at imperial influ- 
ence, but also prepared the way for their own exile 
to Avignon. This involved the loss of the second 
great authority to which Italy had been accustomed 
to look for the maintenance of some sort of national 
coherence. Moreover, the Church, though impotent 
to unite all Italy beneath her own sway, had power 
enough to prevent the formation either by Milan or 
Venice or Naples of a substantial kingdom. The re- 
sult was a perpetually recurring process of composi- 
tion, dismemberment, and recomposition, under differ- 
ent forms, of the scattered elements of Italian life. The 
Guelf and Ghibelline parties, inherited from the wars 
of the thirteenth century, survived the political inter- 
ests which had given them birth, and proved an in- 
surmountable obstacle, long after they had ceased to 
have any real significance, to the pacification of the 
country.^ The only important state which maintained 
an unbroken dynastic succession of however disputed 
a nature at this period was the kingdom of the Two 
Sicilies. The only great republics were Venice, Ge- 



» So late as 1526 we find the burlesque poet Folengo exclaiming 
lOrlandino, ii. 59) — 

ChS se non fusser le gran parti in quella, 
Dominerebbe 11 mondo Italia bella. 



loa RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

noa, and Florence. Of these, Genoa, after being re- 
duced in power and prosperity by Venice, was over- 
shadowed by the -successive lords of Milan; while 
Florence was destined at the end of a long struggle 
to fall beneath a family of despots. All the rest of 
Italy, especially to the north of the Apennines, was 
the battle-field of tyrants, whose title was illegitimate 
— based, that is to say, on no feudal principle, derived 
in no regular manner from the Empire, but generally 
held as a gift or extorted as a prize from the predom- 
inant parties in the great towns. 

If we examine the constitution of these tyrannies, 
we find abundant proofs of their despotic nature. The 
succession from father to son was always uncertain. 
Legitimacy of birth was hardly respected. The last 
La Scalas were bastards. The house of Aragon in 
Naples descended from a bastard. Gabriello Visconti 
shared with his half-brothers the heritage of Gian 
Galeazzo. The line of the Medici was continued by 
princes of more than doubtful origin. Suspicion 
rested on the birth of Frederick of Urbino. The 
houses of Este and Malatesta honored their bastards 
in the same degree as their lawful progeny. The 
great family of the Bentivogli at Bologna owed their 
importance at the end of the fifteenth century to an 
obscure and probably spurious pretender, dragged 
from the wool-factories of Florence by the policy of 
Cosimo de' Medici. The sons of popes ranked with 
the proudest of aristocratic families. Nobility was 
less regarded in the choice of a ruler than personal 



CHARACTER OF ITALIAN TYRANNY, i'j»3 

ability. Power once acquired was maintained by 
force, and the history of the ruling families is one 
long catalogue of crimes. Yet the cities thus gov- 
erned were orderly and prosperous. Police regula- 
tions were carefully established and maintained by 
governors whose interest it was to rule a quiet state. 
Culture was widely diffused without regard to rank 
or wealth. Public edifices of colossal grandeur were 
multiplied. Meanwhile the people at large were be- 
ing fashioned to that self-conscious and intelligent 
activity which is fostered by the modes of life pecu- 
liar to political and social centers in a condition of 
continued rivalry and change. 

Under the Italian despotisms we observe nearly 
the opposite of all the influences brought to bear in 
the same period upon the nations of the North. 
There is no gradual absorption of the great vassals 
in monarchies, no fixed allegiance to a reigning dy- 
nasty, no feudal aid or military service attached to 
the tenure of the land, no tendency to centralize the 
whole intellectual activity of the race in any capital, 
no suppression of individual character by strongly 
biased public feeling, by immutable law, or by the 
superincumbent weight of a social hierarchy. Every- 
thing, on the contrary, tends to the free emergence 
of personal passions and personal aims. Though the 
vassals of the despot are neither his soldiers nor his 
loyal lieges, but his courtiers and taxpayers, the con- 
tinual object of his cruelty and fear, yet each sub- 
ject has the chance of becoming a prince like Sforza 



104 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

or a companion of princes like Petrarch. Equality of 
servitude goes far to democratize a nation, and com- 
mon hatred of the tyrant leads to the combination of 
all classes against him. Thence follows the fermenta- 
tion of arrogant and self-reliant passior s in the breasts 
of the lowest as well as the highest.^ The rapid 
mutations of government teach men to care for 
themselves and to depend upon themselves alone 
in the battle of the world; while the necessity of 
craft and policy in the conduct of complicated affairs 
sharpens intelligence. The sanction of all means that 
may secure an end under conditions of social vio- 
lence encourages versatility unprejudiced by moral 
considerations. At the same time the freely indulged 
vices of the sovereign are an example of self-indul- 
gence to the subject, and his need of lawless instru- 
ments is a practical sanction of force in all its forms. 
Thus to the play of personality, whether in combat 
with society and rivals, or in the gratification of indi- 
vidual caprice, every liberty is allowed. Might is sub- 
stituted for right, and the sense of law is supplanted 
by a mere dread of coercion. What is the wonder if 
a Benvenuto Cellini should be the outcome of the 
same society as that which formed a Cesare Borgia ? 
What is the miracle if Italy under these circum- 
stances produced original characters and many-sided 
intellects in greater profusion than any other nation at 



> See Guicciardini, ' Dialogo del Reggimento di Firenze/ Op. 
Jned. vol. ii. p. 53, for a critique of the motives of tyrannicide in 
Italy. 



FREDERICK II, IO5 

any other period, with the single exception of Greece 
on her emergence from the age of her despots ? It 
was the misfortune of Italy that the age of the des- 
pots was succeeded not by an age of free political 
existence, but by one of foreign servitude. 

Frederick II. was at the same time the last em- 
peror who maintained imperial sway in Italy in per- 
son, and also the beginner of a new system of gov- 
ernment which the despots afterwards pursued. His 
estalilishment of the Saracen colony at Nocera, as 
the nucleus of an army ready to fulfill his orders with 
scrupulous disregard for Italian sympathies and cus- 
toms, taught all future rulers to reduce their subjects 
to a state of unarmed passivity, and to carry on their 
wars by the aid of German, English, Swiss, Gascon, 
Breton, or Hungarian mercenaries, as the case might 
be. Frederick, again, derived from his Mussulman 
predecessors in Sicily the arts of taxation to the ut- 
most limits of the national capacity, and founded a 
precedent for the levying of tolls by a Catasto or 
schedule of the properties attributed to each individ- 
ual in the state. He also destroyed the self-govern- 
ment of burghs and districts, by retaining for himself 
the right to nominate officers, and by estabhshing a 
system of judicial jurisdiction which derived authority 
from the throne. Again, he introduced the example 
of a prince making profit out of the industries of his 
subjects by monopolies and protective duties. In this 
path he was followed by illustrious successors — espe- 
cially by Sixtus IV. and Alfonso II. of Aragon, who 



I06 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

enriched themselves by trafficking in the corn and 
olive-oil of their famished provinces. Lastly, Fred- 
erick established .the precedent of a court formed 
upon the model of that of Oriental Sultans, in which 
chamberlains and secretaries took the rank of heredi- 
tary nobles, and functions of state weJ^ig confided to 
the body-servants of the monarch. This^ court gave 
currency to those habits of polite cultur^ magnifi- 
cent living, and personal luxury which pmyed so 
prominent a part in all subsequent Italian de^otism. 
It is tempting to overstrain a point in estimating the 
direct influence of Frederick's example. In many 
respects doubtless he was merely somewhat in ad- 
vance of his age; and what we may be inclined to 
ascribe to him personally, would have followed in the 
natural evolution of events. Yet it remains a fact 
that he first realized the type of cultivated despotism 
which prevailed throughout Italy in the fourteenth 
and fifteenth centuries. Italian literature began in 
his court, and many Saracenic customs of statecraft 
were transmitted through him from Palermo to 
Lombardy. 

While Frederick foreshadowed the comparatively 
modern tyrants of the coming age, his Vicar in the 
North of Italy, Ezzelino da Romano, represented the 
atrocities towards which they always tended to de- 
generate. Regarding himself with a sort of awfuJ 
veneration as the divinely appointed scourge of hu- 
manity, this monster in his lifetime was execrated as 
an aberration from * the kindly race of men,' and after 



EZZELINO. 107 

his death he became the hero of a fiendish mythus. 
But in the succeeding centuries of Italian history his 
kind was only too common; the immorality with 
which he worked out his selfish aims was system- 
atically adopted by princes like the Visconti, and 
reduced to rule by theorists like Machiavelli. Ez- 
zelino, a small, pale, wiry man, with terror in his 
face and enthusiasm for evil in his heart, lived a 
foe to luxury, cold to the pathos of children, dead 
to the enchantment of women. His one passion 
was the greed of power, heightened by the lust 
for blood. Originally a noble of the Veronese 
Marches, he founded his illegal authority upon the 
captaincy of the Imperial party delegated to him by 
Frederick. Verona, Vicenza, Padua, Feltre, and Bel- 
luno made him their captain in the Ghibelline inter- 
est, conferring on him judicial as well as military 
supremacy. How he fearfully abused his power, 
how a crusade was preached against him,i and 
how he died in silence, like a boar at bay, rend- 
ing from his wounds the dressings that his foes 
had 'placed to keep him alive, are notorious mat- 
ters of history. At Padua alone he erected eight 
prisons, two of which contained as many as three 
hundred captives each; and though the executioner 
never ceased to ply his trade there, they were always 
full. These dungeons were designed to torture by 
their noisomeness, their want of air and light and 

» Alexander IV. issued letters for this crusade in 1255. It was 
preached next year by the Archbishop of Ravenna. 



I08 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

space. Ezzelino made himself terrible not merely 
by executions and imprisonments but also by mu- 
tilations and torments. When he captured Friola 
he caused the population, of all ages, sexes, occu- 
pations, to be deprived of their eyes, noses, and 
legs, and to be cast forth to the mercy of the ele- 
ments. On another occasion he walled up a family 
of princes in a castle and left them to die of famine. 
Wealth, eminence, and beauty attracted his displeas- 
ure no less than insubordination or disobedience. 
Nor was he less crafty than cruel. Sons betrayed 
their fathers, friends their comrades, under the fal- 
lacious safeguard of his promises. A gigantic in- 
stance of his scheming was the coup-de-maIn by 
which he succeeded In entrapping 1 1 ,000 Paduan 
soldiers, only 200 of whom escaped the miseries 
of his prisons. Thus by his absolute contempt of 
law, his inordinate cruelty, his prolonged massacres, 
and his infliction of plagues upon whole peoples, 
Ezzelino established the Ideal in Italy of a tyrant 
marching to his end by any means whatever. In 
vain was the humanity of the race revolted by the 
hideous spectacle. Vainly did the monks assemble 
pity-stricken multitudes upon the plain of Paquara 
to atone with tears and penitence for the Insults 
offered to the saints in heaven by Ezzellno's fury. 
It laid a deep hold upon the Italian Imagination, 
and, by the glamor of loathing that has strength to 
fascinate, proved in the end contagious. We are 
apt to ask ourselves whether such men are mad — 



HIS CRUELTY. 109 

whether in the case of a Nero or a Marechal de 
Retz or an Ezzelino the love of evil and the thirst 
for blood are not a monomaniacal perversion of 
barbarous passions which even in a cannibal are 
morbid.^ Is there in fact such a thing as , Hsema- 
t )mania, Bloodmadness ? But if we answer this 
qaestion in the affirmative, we shall have to place 
how many Visconti, Sforzeschi, Malatesti, Borgias, 
Farnesi, and princes of the houses of Anjou and 
Aragon in the list of these maniacs ? Ezzelino was 
indeed only the first of a long and horrible proces- 
sion, the most terror-striking because the earliest, 
prefiguring all the rest. 

Ezzelino s cruelty was no mere Berserkir fury or 
Lycanthropia coming ovei him in gusts and leaving 
him exhausted. It was steady and continuous. In 
his madness, if such we may call this inhumanity, 
there was method; he used it to the end of the con- 
solidation of his tyranny. Yet, inasmuch as it passed 
all limits and prepared his downfall, it may be said to 
have obtained over his nature the mastery of an in- 
sane appetite. While applying the nomenclature of 
disease to these exceptional monsters, we need not 
allow that their atrocities were, at first at any rate, be- 
yond their control. Moral insanity is often nothing 
more than the hypertrophy of some vulgar passion — 
lust, violence, cruelty, jealousy, and the like. The 
tyrant, placed above law and less influenced by pub- 
lic opinion than a private person, may easily allow a 

• See Appendix, No. I. 



no RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

greed for pleasure or a love of bloodshed to acquire 
morbid proportions in his nature. He then is not un- 
justly termed a monomaniac. Within the circle of 
his vitiated appetite he proves himself irrational. He 
becomes the puppet of passions which the sane man 
cannot so much as picture to his fancy, the victim of 
desire, ever recurring and ever destined to remain 
unsatisfied; nor is any hallucination more akin to lu- 
nacy than the mirage of a joy that leaves the soul 
thirstier than it was before, the paroxysm of unnat- 
ural pleasure which wearies the nerves that crave 
for it. 

In Frederick, the modern autocrat, and Ezzelino, 
the legendary tyrant, we obtain the earliest specimens 
of two types of despotism in Italy. Their fame long 
after their death powerfully affected the fancy of the 
people, worked itself into the literature of the Ital- 
ians, and created a consciousness of tyranny in the 
minds of irresponsible rulers. 

During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries we 
find, roughly speaking, six sorts of despots in Italian 
cities.^ Of these the first class, which is a very small 
one, had a dynastic or hereditary right accruing from 
long seignioral possession of their several districts. 
The most eminent are the houses of Montferrat and 
Savoy, the Marquises of Ferrara, the Princes of Ur- 
bino. At the same time it is difficult to know where 



> This classification must of necessity be imperfect, since many 
of the tyrannies belong in part to two or more of the kinds which I 
have mentioned. 



SPECIES OF TTALTAN DESPOTS. Ill 

to draw the line between such hereditary lordship as 
that of the Este family, and tyranny based on popular 
favor. The Malatesti of Rimini, Polentani of Raven- 
na, Manfredi of Faenza, Ordelaffi of Forli, Chiavelli 
of Fabriano, Varani of Camerino, and others, might 
claim to rank among the former, since their cities sub- 
mitted to them without a long period of republican in- 
dependence like that which preceded despotism in 
the cases to be next mentioned. Yet these families 
styled themselves Captains of the burghs they ruled ; 
and in many instances they obtained the additional 
title of Vicars of the Church.^ Even the Estensi were 
made hereditary captains of Ferrara at the end of the 
thirteenth century, while they also acknowledged the 
supremacy of the Papacy. There was in fact no right 
outside the Empire in Italy; and despots of whatever 
origin or complexion gladly accepted the support 
which a title derived from the Empire, the Church, or 
the People might give. Brought to the front amid 
the tumults of the civil wars, and accepted as pacifica- 
tors of the factions by the multitude, they gained th*^ 
confirmation of their anomalous authority by repre- 
senting themselves to be lieutenants or vicegerents 
of the three great powers. The second class comprise 
those nobles who obtained the title of Vicars of the 
Empire, and built an illegal power upon the basis of 
imperial right in Lombardy. Of these, the Delia 
Scala and Visconti families are illustrious instances. 
Finding in their official capacity a ready-made foun- 

See Guicc 1st. end of Book 4. 



lit RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

dation, they extended it beyond its just limits, and in 
defiance of the Empire constituted dynasties. The 
third class is impqrtant. Nobles charged with mili- 
tary or judicial power, as Capitani or Podestas, by 
the free burghs, used their authority to enslave the 
cities they were chosen to administer. It was thus 
that almost all the numerous tyrants of Lombardy, 
Carraresi at Padua, Gonzaghi at Mantua, Rossi and 
Correggi at Parma, Torrensi and Visconti at Milan, 
Scotti at Piacenza, and so forth, first erected their 
despotic dynasties. This fact in the history of Italian 
tyranny is noticeable. The font of honor, so to 
speak, was in the citizens of these great burghs. 
Therefore, when the limits of authority delegated to 
their captains by the people were overstepped, the 
sway of the princes became confessedly illegal. Il- 
legality carried with it all the consequences of an evil 
conscience, all the insecurities of usurped dominion 
all the danger from without and from within to which 
an arbitrary governor is exposed. In Xh^ fourth class 
we find the principle of force still more openly at 
work. To it may be assigned those Condottieri who 
made a prey of cities at their pleasure. The illus- 
trious Uguccione della Faggiuola, who neglected to 
follow up his victory over the Guelfs at Monte Catini, 
in order that he might cement his power in Lucca 
and Pisa, is an early instance of this kind of tyrant. 
His successor, Castruccio Castracane, the hero of 
Machiavelli's romance, is another. But it was not 
until the first half of the fifteenth century that profes- 



BOURGEOIS DESPOTS. II3 

sional Condottieri became powerful enough to found 
such kingdoms as that, for example, of Francesco 
Sforza at Milan.^ The Jifth class includes the neph- 
ews or sons of Popes. The Riario principality of 
Forli, the Delia Rovere of Urbino, the Borgia of Ro- 
magna, the Farnese of Parma, form a distinct species 
of despotisms; but all these are of a comparatively 
late origin. Until the Papacies of Sixtus IV. and In- 
nocent VIII. the Popes had not bethought them of 
providing in this way for their relatives. Also, it may 
be remarked, there was an essential weakness in these 
tyrannies. Since they had to be carved out of the 
States of the Church, the Pope who had established 
his son, say in Romagna, died before he could see 
him well confirmed in a province which the next Pope 
sought to wrest from his hands, in order to bestow it 
on his own favorite. The fabric of the Church could 



> John Hawkwood (died 1393), the English adventurer, held 
Cotignola and Bagnacavallo from Gregory XI. In the second half 
of the fifteenth century the efforts of the Condottieri to erect tyran- 
nies were most frequent. Braccio da Montone established himselt 
in Perugia in 1416, and aspired, not without good grounds for hope, 
to acquiring the kingdom of Italy. Francesco Sforza, before gaining 
Milan, had begun to form a despotism at Ancona, Sforza's rival, 
Giacomo Piccinino, would probably have succeeded in his own at- 
tempt, had not Ferdinand of Aragon treacherously murdered him 
at Naples in 1465. In the disorganization caused by Charles VIII,, 
Vidovero of Brescia in 1495 established himself at Cesena and Cas- 
telnuovo, and had to be assassinated by Pandolfo Malatesta at the 
instigation of Venice. After the death of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, in 
1402, the generals whom he had employed in the consolidation of his 
vast dominions attempted to divide the spoil among themselves. 
Naples, Venice, Milan, Rome, and Florence were in course of time 
made keenly alive to the risk nf suffering a captain of adventure to 
run his course unchecked. 



ZI4 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

not long have stood this disgraceful wrangling be- 
tween Papal families for the dynastic possession of 
Church property. . Luckily for the continuance of the 
Papacy, the tide of counter-reformation which set in 
after the sack of Rome and the great Northern 
Schism, put a stop to nepotism In its most barefaced 
form. 

There remains the sixth and last class of despots 
to be mentioned. This again is large and of the first 
importance. Citizens of eminence, like the Medici at 
Florence, the Bentivogli at Bologna, the Baglloni of 
Perugia, the Vitelll of Citta di Castello, the Gamba- 
cortl of Pisa, like Pandolfo Petrucci in Siena (i5o2), 
Romeo Pepoli, the usurer of Bologna (1323), the 
plebeian, Altlclinio, and Agolanti of Padua (13 13), 
Giovanni Vignate, the millionaire of LodI (1402), ac- 
quired more than their due weight in the conduct of 
affairs, and gradually tended to tyranny. In most of 
these cases great wealth was the original source 
of despotic ascendency. It was not uncommon to 
buy cities together with their SIgnory. Thus the 
Rossi bought Parma for 35,000 florins In 1333; the 
AppianI sold Pisa; Astorre Manfredi sold Faenza 
and Imok In 1377. In 1444 Galeazzo Malatesta 
sold Pesaro to Alessandro Sforza, and Fossombrone 
to Urbino; in 1461 Cervia was sold to Venice by 
the same family. Franceschetto Clbo purchased the 
County of Angulllara. Towns at last came to have 
their market value. It was known that Bologna was 
worth 200,000 florins, Parma 60,000, Arezzo 40,000 



DECAY OF ITALIAN LIBERTY. II5 

Lucca 30,000, and so forth. But personal qualities 
and nobility of blood might also produce despots of 
the sixth class. Thus the Bentivogli claimed descent 
from a bastard of King Enzo, son of Frederick II., 
who was for a long time an honorable prisoner in 
Bologna. The Baglioni, after a protracted struggle 
with the rival family of Oddi, owed their supremacy 
to ability and vigor in the last years of the fifteenth 
century. But the neighborhood of the Papal power, 
and their own internal dissensions, rendered the hold 
of this family upon Perugia precarious. As in the 
case of the Medici and the Bentivogli, many genera- 
tions might elapse before such burgher families as- 
sumed dynastic authority. But to this end they were 
always advancing. 

The history of the bourgeois despots proves that 
Italy in the fifteenth century was undergoing a natural 
process of determination toward tyranny. Sismondi 
may attempt to demonstrate that Italy was * not an- 
swerable for the crimes with which she was sullied 
by her tyrants.' But the facts show that she was 
answerable for choosing despots instead of remaining 
free, or rather that she instinctively obeyed a law of 
social evolution by which princes had to be substi- 
tuted for municipalities at the end of those fierce 
internal conflicts and exhausting wars of jealousy 
which closed the Middle Ages. Machiavelli, with 
all his love of liberty, is forced to admit that in his 
day the most powerful provinces of Italy had be- 
come incapable of freedom. ' No accident, however 



Il6 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

weighty and violent, could ever restore Milan oi 
Naples to liberty, owing to their utter corruption. 
This is clear from the fact that after the death of 
Filippo Visconti, when Milan tried to regain freedom, 
she was unable to preserve it.' ^ Whether Machia- 
velli is right in referring this incapacity for self-gov- 
ernment to the corruption of morals and religion may 
be questioned. But it is certain that throughout the 
states of Italy, with the one exception of Venice, 
causes were at work inimical to republics and favor- 
able to despotisms. 

It will be observed in this classification of Italian 
tyrants that the tenure of their power was almost uni- 
formly forcible. They generally acquired it through 
the people in the first instance, and maintained it by 
the exercise of violence. Rank had nothing to do 
with their claims. The bastards of Popes, who like 
Sixtus IV. had no pedigree, merchants like the Me- 
dici, the son of a peasant like Francesco Sforza, a 
rich usurer like Pepoli, had almost equal chances with 
nobles of the ancient houses of Este, Visconti, or Ma- 
latesta. The chief point in favor of the latter was the 
familiarity which through long years of authority had 
accustomed the people to their rule. When exiled, 
they had a better chance of return to power than par- 

> Discorsi, i. 17. The Florentine philosopher remarks in the 
same passage, ' Cities, once corrupt, and accustomed to the rule of 
a prince, can never acquire their freedom even though the prince 
with all his kith and kin be extirpated. One prince is needed to ex- 
tinguish another; and the city has no rest except oy the creation of 
a new lord, unless one burgher by his goodness and his great quali 
tics may chance to preserve its independence during his lifetime.* 



LIVES OF THE DESPOTS. 117 

venus, whose party-cry and ensigns were compara- 
tively fresh and stirred no sentiment of loyalty — if 
indeed the word loyalty can be applied to that pref- 
erence for the established and the customary which 
made the mob, distracted by the wrangling of doctri- 
naires and intriguers, welcome back a Bentivoglio or 
a Malatesta. Despotism in Italy as in ancient Greece 
was democratic. It recruited its ranks from all classes 
and erected its thrones upon the sovereignty of the 
peoples it oppressed. The impulse to the free play 
of ambitious individuality which this state of things 
communicated was enormous. Capacity might raise 
the meanest monk to the chair of S. Peter's, the 
meanest soldier to the duchy of Milan. Audacity, 
vigor, unscrupulous crime were the chief requisites 
for success. It was not till Cesare Borgia displayed 
his magnificence at the French Court, till the Italian 
adventurer matched himself with royalty in its legiti- 
mate splendor, that the lowness of his origin and the 
frivolity of his pretensions appeared in any glaring 
light.^ In Italy itself, where there existed no time- 
honored hierarchy of classes and no fountain of no- 
bility in the person of a sovereign, one man was a 
match for another, provided he knew how to assert 
himself To the conditions of a society based on these 
principles we may ascribe the unrivaled emergence 

I Brant6me Capitaines Etrangers, Discours 48, gives an account 
of the entrance of the Borgia into Chinon in 1498, and adds : ' The 
king being at the window saw him arrive, and there can be no doul>t 
how he and his courtiers ridiculed all this state, as unbecoming the 
petty Duke of Valentinois.' 



Il8 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

of great personalities among the tyrants, as well as 
the extraordinary tenacity and vigor of such races as 
the Visconti. In the contest for power, and in the 
maintenance of an illegal authority, the picked ath- 
letes came to the front. The struggle by which they 
established their tyranny, the efforts by which they 
defended it against foreign foes and domestic adver- 
saries, trained them to endurance and to daring. They 
lived habitually in an atmosphere of peril which taxed 
all their energies. Their activity was extreme, and 
their passions corresponded to their vehement vitality. 
About such men there could be nothing on a small 
or mediocre scale. When a weakling was born in a 
despotic family, his brothers murdered him, or he 
was deposed by a watchful rival. Thus only gladi- 
ators of tried capacity and iron nerve, superior to 
religious and moral scruples, dead to national affection, 
perfected in perfidy, scientific in the use of cruelty and 
terror, employing first-rate faculties of brain and will 
and bodily powers m the service of transcendent 
egotism, only the virtuosi of political craft as theo- 
rized by Machiavelli, could survive and hold their 
own upon this perilous arena. 

The life of the despot was usually one of pro- 
longed terror. Immured in strong places on high 
rocks, or confined to gloomy fortresses like the 
Milanese Castello, he surrounded his person with 
foreign troops, protected his bedchamber with a 
picked guard, and watched his meat and drink lest 
they should be poisoned. His chief associates were 



CATASTROPHES OF REIGNING FAMILIES, 119 

artists, men of letters, astrologers, buffoons, and ex- 
iles. He had no real friends or equals, and against 
his own family he adopted an attitude of fierce sus- 
picion, justified by the frequent intrigues to which he 
was exposed.^ His timidity verged on monomania. 
Like Alfonso II. of Naples, he was tortured with the 
ghosts of starved or strangled victims; like Ezzelino, 
he felt the mysterious fascination of astrology; like 
Filippo Maria Visconti, he trembled at the sound of 
thunder, and set one band of body-guards to watch 
another next his person. He dared not hope for a 
quiet end. No one believed in the natural death of 
a prince: princes must be poisoned or poignarded.* 

> See what Guicciardini in his History of Florence says about the 
suspicious temper of even such a tyrant as the cultivated and philo- 
sophical Lorenzo de' Medici. See too the incomparably eloquent and 
penetrating allegory of Sospetto, and its application to the tyrants of 
Italy in Ariosto's Cinque Canti (C. 2. St. 1-9). 

> Our dramatist Webster, whose genius was fasainated by the 
crimes of Italian despotism, makes the Duke of Bracciano exclaim 
on his death-bed : — 

*0 thou soft natural Death, thou art joint-twin 
To sweetest Slumber ! no rough-bearded comet 
Stares on thy mild departure; the dull owl 
Beats not against thy casement; the hoarse wolf 
Scents not thy carrion : pity winds thy corse, 
Whilst horror waits on princes.* 

Instances of domestic crime might be multiplied by the hundred. 
Besides those which will follow in these pages, it is enough to notice 
the murder of Giovanni Francesco Pico, by his nephew, at Mirandola 
(1533); the murder of his uncle by Oliverotto da Fermo; the assas- 
sination of Giovanni Varano by his brothers at Camerino (1434); 
Ostasio da Polenta's fratricide (1322); Obizzo da Polenta's fratricide 
in the next generation, and the murder of Ugolino Gonzaga by his 
brothers; Gian Francesco Gonzaga's murder of his wife; the poison- 
ing of Francesco Sforza's first wife, Polissena, Countess of Montalto, 
with hei little girl, by her aunt; and the murder of Galeotto Man 
fredi, by his wife, at Faenza (1488). 



I»0 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

Out of thirteen of the Carrara family, in little more 
than a century (1318-1435), three were deposed or 
murdered by near relatives, one was expelled by a 
rival from his state, four were executed by the Vene- 
tians. Out of five of the La Scala family, three were 
killed by their brothers, and a fourth was poisoned 
in exile. 

To enumerate all the catastrophes of reigning 
families, occurring in the fifteenth century alone, 
would be quite impossible within the limits of this 
chapter. Yet it is only by dwelling on the more 
important that any adequate notion of the perils 
of Italian despotism can be formed. Thus Girol- 
amo Riario was murdered by his subjects at Forli 
(1488), and Francesco Vico dei Prefetti in the 
Church of S. Sisto at Viterbo^ (1387). At Lodi 
in 1402 Antonio Fisiraga burned the chief mem- 
bers of the ruling house of Vistarini on the public 
square, and died himself of poison after a few 
months. His successor in the tyranny, Giovanni 
Vignate, was imprisoned by Filippo Maria Vis- 
conti in a wooden cage at Pavia, and beat his 
brains out in despair against its bars. At the 
same epoch Gabrino Fondulo slaughtered seventy 
of the Cavalcab6 family together in his castle of 
Macastormo, with the purpose of acquiring their 
tyranny over Cremona. He was afterwards be- 
headed as a traitor at Milan (1425). Ottobon 

> The family of the Prefetti fed up the murderer in their castle 
and then gave him alive to be eaten by their hounds. 



FAMILY MASSACRES. 121 

Terzi was assassinated at Parma (1408), Nicola 
Borghese at Siena (1499), Altobello Dattiri at 
Todi (about i5oo), Raimondo and Pandolfo Mala- 
testa at Rimini, and Oddo Antonio di Montefeltro 
at Urbino (1444).^ The Varani were massacred to 
a man in the Church of S. Dominic at Camerino 
(1434), the Trinci at Foligno (1434), and the Chia- 
velli of Fabriano in church upon Ascension Day 
(1435). This wholesale extirpation of three reign- 
ing families introduces one of the most romantic 
episodes in the history of Italian despotism. From 
the slaughter of the Varani one only child, Giulio 
Cesare, a boy of two years old, was saved by 
his aunt Tora. She concealed him in a truss of 
hay and carried him to the Trinci at Foligno. 
Hardly had she gained this refuge, when the 
Trinci were destroyed, and she had to fly with 
her burden to the Chiavelli at Fabriano. There 
the same scenes of bloodshed awaited her. A 
third time she took to flight, and now concealed 
her precious charge in a nunnery. The boy was 
afterwards stolen from the town on horseback by 
a soldier of adventure. After surviving three mas- 
sacres of kith and kin, he returned as despot at 
the age of twelve to Camerino, and became a gen- 

« Sforza Attendolo killed Terzi by a spear-thrust in the back. 
Pandolfo Petrucci murdered Borghese, who was his father-in-law. 
Raimondo Malatesta was stabbed by his two nephews disguised as 
hermits. Dattiri was bound naked to a plank and killed piecemeal 
by the people, who bit his flesh, cut slices out, and sold and ate it — 
distributing his living body as a sort of infernal sacrament among 
themselves. 



laa RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

eral of distinction. But he was not destined to end 
his life in peace. Cesare Borgia finally murdered 
him, together with. three of his sons, when he had 
reached the age of sixty. Less romantic but not 
less significant in the annals of tyranny is the story 
of the Trinci. A rival noble of Foligno, Pietro 
Rasiglia, had been injured in his honor by the 
chief of the ruling house. He contrived to assas- 
sinate two brothers, Nicola and Bartolommeo, in 
his castle of Nocera; but the third, Corrado Trinci, 
escaped, and took a fearful vengeance on his enemy. 
By the help of Braccio da Montone he possessed 
himself of Nocera and all its inhabitants, with the 
exception of Pietro Rasiglia's wife, whom her hus- 
band flung from the battlements. Corrado then 
butchered the men, women, and children of the 
Rasiglia clan, to the number of three hundred per- 
sons, accomplishing his vengeance with details of 
atrocity too infernal to be dwelt on in these pages. 
It is recorded that thirty-six asses laden with their 
mangled limbs paraded the streets of Foligno as 
a terror-striking spectacle for the inhabitants. He 
then ruled the city by violence, until the warlike 
Cardinal dei Vitelleschi avenged society of so much 
mischief by destroying the tyrant and five of his 
sons, in the same year. Equally fantastic are the 
annals of the great house of the Baglioni at Perugia. 
Raised in 1389 upon the ruins of the bourgeois 
faction called Raspanti, they founded their tyrann)* 
in the person of Pandolfo P)aglioni, who was mur- 



THE BENTIVOGLl. I33 

dered together with sixty of his clan and followers 
by the party they had dispossessed. The new des- 
pot, Biordo Michelotti, was stabbed in the shoulders 
with a poisoned dagger by his relative, the abbot 
of S, Pietro. Then the city, in 141 6, submitted 
to Braccio da Montone, who raised it to unpre- 
cedented power and glory. On his death it fell 
back into new discords, from which it was rescued 
again by the BagHoni in 1466, now finally success- 
ful in their prolonged warfare with the rival family 
of Oddi. But they did not hold their despotism 
in tranquillity. In i5oo one of the members of the 
house, Grifonetto degli Baglioni, conspired against 
his kinsmen and slew them in their palaces at 
night. As told by Matarazzo, this tragedy offers 
an epitome of all that is most .brilliant and terrible 
in the domestic feuds of the Italian tyrants.^ The 
vicissitudes of the Bentivogli at Bologna present an- 
other series of catastrophes, due less to their per- 
sonal crimes than to the fury of the civil strife that 
raged around them. Giovanni Bentivoglio began the 
dynasty in 1400. The next year he was stabbed to 
death and pounded in a wine-vat by the infuriated 
populace, who thought he had betrayed their inter- 
ests in battle. His son, Antonio, was beheaded by 
a Papal Legate, and numerous members of the fam 
ily on their return from exile suffered the same fate. 
In course of time the Bentivogli made themselves 
adored by the people; and when Piccinino impris- 

» See the article • Perugia ' in my Sketches in Italy and Greece, 



124 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

oned the heir of their house, Annibale, in the 
castle of Varano, four youths of the Marescotti fam- 
ily undertook his rescue at the peril of their lives, 
and raised him to the Signory of Bologna. In 1445 
the Canetoli, powerful nobles, who hated the popu- 
lar dynasty, invited Annibale and all his clan to a 
christening feast, where they exterminated every 
member of the reigning house. Not one Benti- 
voglio was left alive. In revenge for this massa 
ere, the Marescotti, aided by the populace, hunted 
down the Canetoli for three whole days in Bologna, 
and nailed their smoking hearts to the doors of the 
Bentivoglio palace. They then drew from his ob- 
scurity in Florence the bastard Santi Bentivoglio, 
who found himself suddenly lifted from a wool- 
factory to a throne. Whether he was a genuine 
Bentivoglio or not, mattered little. The house had 
become necessary to Bologna, and its popularity 
had been baptized in the bloodshed of four massa- 
cres. What remains of its story can be briefly told. 
When Cesare Borgia besieged Bologna, the Mar- 
escotti intrigued with him, and eight of their num- 
ber were sacrificed by the Bentivogli in spite of their 
old services to the dynasty. The survivors, by the 
help of Julius II., returned from exile in 1536, to 
witness the final banishment of the Bentivogli and 
to take part in the destruction of the palace, where 
their ancestors had nailed the hearts of the Canetoli 
upon the walls. 

To multiply the records of crime revenged by 



DANGER IN WHICH THE TYRANTS LIVED. 125 

crime, of force repelled by violence, of treason heaped 
on treachery, of insult repaid by fraud, would be easy 
enough. Indeed, a huge book might be compiled 
containing nothing but the episodes in this grim 
history of despotism, now tragic and pathetic, now 
terror-moving in sublimity of passion, now despicable 
by the baseness of the motives brought to light, at 
one time revolting through excess of physical hor- 
rors, at another fascinating by the spectacle of heroic 
courage, intelligence, and resolution. Enough how- 
ever, has been said to describe the atmosphere of 
danger In which the tyrants breathed and moved, 
and from which not one of them was ever capable 
of finding freedom. Even a princely house so well 
based in its dynasty and so splendid in its parade of 
culture as that of the Estensi offers a long list of 
terrific tragedies. One princess is executed for adul- 
tery with her stepson (1425); a bastards bastard tries 
to seize the throne, and is put to death with all his 
kin (1493); a wife is poisoned by her husband to 
prevent her poisoning him (1493); two brothers cabal 
against the legitimate heads of the house, and are 
Imprisoned for life (i5o6). Such was the labyrinth 
of plot and counterplot, of force repelled by violence, 
in which the princes praised by Ariosto and by Tasso 
lived. 

Isolated, crime-haunted, and remorseless, at the 
same time fierce and timorous, the despot not un- 
frequently made of vice a fine art for his amusement, 
and openly defied humanity. His pleasures tended 



126 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

to extravagance. Inordinate lust and refined cruelty 
sated his irritable and jaded appetites. He destroyed 
pity in his soul, and fed his dogs with living men, or 
spent his brains upon the invention of new tortures. 
From the game of politics again he won a feverish 
pleasure, playing for states and cities as a man plays 
chess, and endeavoring to extract the utmost excite 
ment from the varying turns of skill and chance. It 
would be an exaggeration to assert that all the princes 
of Italy were of this sort. The saner, better, and no- 
bler among them — men of the stamp of Glan Gal- 
eazzo Visconti, Can Grande della Scala, Francesco 
and Lodovico Sforza, found a more humane enjoy 
ment in the consolidation of their empire, the cement 
ing of their alliances, the society of learned men, the 
friendship of great artists, the foundation of libraries, 
the building of palaces and churches, the execution 
of vast schemes of conquest. Others, like Galeazzo 
Visconti, indulged a comparatively Innocent taste for 
magnificence. Some, like Sigismondo Pandolfo Mal- 
atesta, combined the vices of a barbarian with the 
enthusiasm of a scholar. Others again, like Lorenzo 
de* Medici and Frederick of Urbino, exhibited the 
model of moderation in statecraft and a noble width 
of culture. But the tendency to degenerate was fatal 
In all the despotic houses. The strain of tyranny 
proved too strong. Crime, illegality, and the sense 
of peril, descending from father to son, produced 
monsters in the shape of men. The last Visconti, 
the last La Scalas, the last Sforzas, the last Mala- 



MACAULAY ON ITALIAN TYRANTS, \tj 

testas, the last FarnesI, the last Medici are among 
the worst specimens of human nature. 

Macaulay's brilliant description of the Italian ty- 
rant in his essay on Machiavelli deserves careful 
study. It may, however, be remarked that the pic- 
ture is too favorable. Macaulay omits the darker 
crimes of the despots, and draws his portrait almost 
exclusively from such men as Gian Galeazzo Visconti, 
Francesco and Lodovico Sforza, Frederick of Urbino, 
and Lorenzo de' Medici. The point he is seeking to 
establish — that political immorality in Italy was the 
national correlative to Northern brutality — leads him 
to idealize the polite refinement, the disciplined pas- 
sions, the firm and astute policy, the power over 
men, and the excellent government which distin 
guished the noblest Italian princes. When he says 
* Wanton cruelty was not in his nature: on the con- 
trary, where no political object was at stake, his dis- 
position was soft and humane ' ; he seems to have 
forgotten Gian Maria Visconti, Corrado Trinci, Sig- 
ismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, and Cesare Borgia. 
When he writes, ' His passions, like well-trained 
troops, are impetuous by rule, and in their most 
headstrong fury never forget the discipline to which 
they have been accustomed,' he leaves Francesco 
Maria della Rovere, Galeazzo Maria Sforza, Pier 
Luigi Farnese, Alexander VI., out of the reckoning. 
If all the despots had been what Macaulay describes, 
the revolutions and conspiracies of the fourteenth 
and fifteenth centuries would not have taken place. 



138 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

It is, however, to be remarked that in the sixteenth 
century the conduct of the tyrant toward his subjects 
assumed an external form of mildness. As Italy 
mixed with the European nations, and as tyranny 
came to be legalized in the Italian states, the des- 
pots developed a policy not of terrorism but of ener- 
vation (Lorenzo de' Medici is the great example), 
and aspired to be paternal governors. 

What I have said about Italian despotism is no 
mere fancy picture. The actual details of Milanese 
history, the innumerable tragedies of Lombardy, 
Romagna, and the Marches of Ancona, during the 
ascendency of despotic families, are far more terrible 
than any fiction; nor would it be easy for the imagi- 
nation to invent so perplexing a mixture of savage 
barbarism with modern refinement. Savonarola's de- 
nunciations^ and Villani's descriptions of a despot 
read like passages from Plato's Republic, like the 
most pregnant of Aristotle's criticisms upon tyranny. 
The prologue to the sixth book of Matteo Villani's 
Chronicle may be cited as a fair specimen of the 
judgment passed by contemporary Italian thinkers 
upon their princes (Libro Sesto, cap. i.): *The crimes 
of despots always hinder and often neutralize the vir- 
tues of good men. Their pleasures are at variance 
with morality. By them the riches of their subjects 

> See the passage condensed from his Sermons in Villari's Lile 
of Savonarola (Eng. Tr. vol. ii. p. 62). The most thorough-going 
analysis of despotic criminality is contained in Savonarola's Tractato 
circa el Reggi7nento e Governo della Cittd di Firenze, Trattato ii* 
cap. 2. Delia Malitia e pessime Conditioni del Tyranno. 



MATTEO VILLAm, 1*9 

are swallowed up. They are foes to men who grow 
in wisdom and in greatness of soul in their domin- 
ions. They diminish by their imposts the wealth of 
the peoples ruled by them. Their unbridled lust is 
never satiated, but their subjects have to suffer such 
outrages and insults as their fancy may from time to 
time suggest. But inasmuch as the violence of tyr- 
anny is manifested to all eyes by these and many 
other atrocities, we need not enumerate them afresh. 
It is enough to select one feature, strange in appear- 
ance but familiar in fact; for what can be more ex- 
traordinary than to see princes of ancient and illustri- 
ous lineage bowing to the service of despots, men of 
high descent and time-honored nobility frequenting 
their tables and accepting their bounties ? Yet if we 
consider the end of all this, the glory of tyrants often 
turns to misery and ruin. Who can exaggerate their 
wretchedness ? They know not where to place their 
confidence; and their courtiers are always on the 
lookout for the despot's fall, gladly lending their in- 
fluence and best endeavors to undo him in spite of 
previous servility. This does not happen to heredi- 
tary kings, because their conduct toward their sub- 
jects, as well as their good qualities and all their cir- 
cumstances, are of a nature contrary to that of tyrants. 
Therefore the very causes which produce and fortify 
and augment tyrannies, conceal and nourish in them- 
selves the sources of their overthrow and ruin. This 
indeed is the greatest wretchedness of tyrants.' 

It may be objected that this sweeping criticism, 



I30 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

from the pen of a Florentine citizen at war with 
Milan, partakes of the nature of an invective. Yet 
abundant proofs can be furnished from the chronicles 
of burghs which owed material splendor to their des- 
pots, confirming the censure of Villani. Matarazzo, 
for example, whose sympathy with the house of Bag- 
lioni is so striking, and who exults in the distinction 
they conferred upon Perugia, writes no less bitterly 
concerning the pernicious effects of their misgovern - 
ment.^ It is to be noticed that Villani and Matarazzo 
agree about the special evils brought upon the popu- 
lations by their tyrants. Lust and violence take the 
first place. Next comes extortion; then the protec- 
tion of the lawless and the criminal against the better 
sort of citizens. But the Florentine, with intellectual 
acumen, lays his finger on one of the chief vices of 
their rule. They retard the development of mental 
greatness in their states, and check the growth of 
men of genius. Ariosto, in the comparative calm of 
the sixteenth century, when tyrannies had yielded to 
the protectorate of Spain, sums up the records of the 
past in the following memorable passage i^ 'Happy 
the kingdoms where an open-hearted and blameless 
man gives law! Wretched indeed and pitiable are 
those where injustice and cruelty hold sway, where 
burdens ever greater and more grievous are laid 
upon the people by tyrants like those who now 
abound in Italy, whose infamy will be recorded 

» Arch. Stor. xvi. 102. See my Shctihe.s in Italy and Greece, p. 84. 
• Cinque Canti, ii. 5. 



RISE OF THE VISCONTL 131 

through years to come as no less black than Ca- 
ligula's or Nero's.' Guicciardini, with pregnant brev- 
ity, observes: ^ * The mortar with which the states of 
the tyrants are cemented is the blood of the citizens.* 
In the history of Italian despotism two points of 
first-rate importance will demand attention. The first 
is the process by which the greater tyrannies ab- 
sorbed the smaller during the fourteenth century. 
The second is the relation of the chief Condottieri to 
the tyrants of the fifteenth century. The evolution 
of these two phenomena cannot be traced more 
clearly than by a study of the history of Milan, which 
at the same time presents a detailed picture of the 
policy and character of the Italian despot during this 
period. The dynasties of Visconti and Sforza from 
1 300 to 1 5 00 bridged over the years that intervened 
between the Middle Age and the Renaissance, between 
the period of the free burghs and the period during 
which Italy was destined to become the theater of the 
action of more powerful nations. Their alliances and 
diplomatic relations prepared the way for the inter- 
ference of foreigners in Italian affairs. Their pedi- 
gree illustrates the power acquired by military ad- 
venturers in the peninsula. The magnitude of their 
political schemes displays the most soaring ambition 
which it was ever granted to Italian princes to in- 
dulge. The splendor of their court and the intelli- 
gence of their culture bear witness to the high state 
of civilization which the Italians had reached. 

• Ricordi Politic! ccxlii. 



132 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

The power of the Visconti in Milan was founded 
upon that of the Delia Torre family, who preceded 
them as Captains General of the people at the end of 
the thirteenth century. Otho, Archbishop of Milan, 
first laid a substantial basis for the dominion of his 
house by imprisoning Napoleone Delia Torre and 
five of his relatives in three iron cages in 1277, and 
by causing his nephew Matteo Visconti to be nomi- 
nated both by the Emperor and by the people of 
Milan as imperial Vicar. Matteo, who headed the 
Ghibelline party in Lombardy, was the model of a 
prudent Italian despot. From the date 1 3 1 1 , when 
he finally succeeded in his attempts upon the sover- 
eignty of Milan, to 1322, when he abdicated in favor 
of his son Galeazzo, he ruled his states by force of 
character, craft, and insight, more than by violence or 
cruelty. Excellent as a general, he was still better 
as a diplomatist, winning more cities by money than 
by the sword. All through his life, as became a 
Ghibelline chief at that time, he persisted in fierce 
enmity against the Church. But just before his death 
a change came over him. He showed signs of super- 
stitious terror, and began to fear the ban of excom- 
munication which lay upon him. This weakness 
alarmed the suspicions of his sons, terrible and wolf- 
like men, whom Matteo had hitherto controlled with 
bit and bridle. They therefore induced him to abdi- 
cate in 1322, and when in the same year he died, 
they buried his body in a secret place, lest it should 
be exhumed and scattered to the winds in accordance 



ADVANCE OF THE VISCONTL 1 33 

with the Papal edict against him.^ Galeazzo, his son, 
was less fortunate Chan Matteo, surnamed II Grande 
by the Lombards. The Emperor Louis of Bavaria 
threw him into prison on the occasion of his visit to 
Milan in 1327, and only released him at the interces- 
sion of his friend Castruccio Castracane. To such an 
extent was the growing tyranny of the Visconti still 
dependent upon their office delegated from the Em- 
pire. This Galeazzo married Beatrice d* Este, the 
widow of Nino di Gallura, of whom Dante speaks in 
the eighth canto of the Purgatory, and had by her a 
son named Azzo. Azzo bought the city, together 
with the title of Imperial Vicar, from the same Louis 
who had imprisoned his father.^ When he was thus 
seated in the tyranny of his grandfather, he proceeded 
to fortify it further by the addition of ten Lombard 
towns, which he reduced beneath the supremacy of 
Milan. At the same time he consolidated his own 

» We may compare what Dante puts into the mouth of Manfred in 
the * Purgatory ' (canto iii.). The great Ghibelline poet here protests 
against the use of excommunication as a political weapon. His sense 
of justice will not allow him to believe that God can regard the sen- 
tence of priests and pontiffs, actuated by the spite of partisans; yet 
the examples of Frederick II. and of this Matteo Visconti prove how 
terrifying, even to the boldest, those sentences continued to be. Few 
had the resolute will of Galeazzo Pico di Mirandola, who expired in 
1499 under the ban of the Church, which he had borne for sixteen 
years. 

* This was in 1328. Azzo agreed to pay 25,000 florins. The vast 
wealth of the Visconti amassed during their years of peaceful occu- 
pation always stood them in good stead when bad times came, and 
when the Emperor was short of cash. Azzo deserves special com- 
mendation from the student of art for the exquisite octagonal tower 
of S. Gottardo, which he built of terra cotta with marble pilasters, in 
Milan. It is quite one of the loveliest monuments of mediaeval Italian 
architecture. 



134 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

power by the murder of his uncle Marco in i32v> 
who had grown too mighty as a general. Giovio d*'^ • 
scribes him as fair of complexion, blue- eyed, curly- 
haired, and subject to the hereditary disease of gout.^ 
Azzo died in 1339, and was succeeded by his uncle 
Lucchino. In Lucchino the darker side of the Vis- 
conti character appears for the first time. Cruel, 
moody, and jealous, he passed his life in perpetual 
terror. His nephews, Galeazzo and Barnabarj, con- 
spired against him, and were exiled to Flandeis. His 
wife, Isabella Fieschi, intrigued with Galeazzo and 
disgraced him by her amours with Ugolino Gonzaga 
and Dandolo the Doge of Venice. Finally f.uspicion 
rose to such a pitch between this ill-assorted cou[»le, 
that, while Lucchino was plotting how to murder Isa- 
bella, she succeeded in poisoning him in 1349. In 
spite of these domestic calamities, Lucchino was po- 
tent as a general and governor. He bought Parma 
from Obizzo d' Este, and made the town of Pisa de- 
pendent upon Milan. Already in his policy we can 
trace the encroachment which characterized the 
schemes of the Milanese despots, who were always 
plotting to advance their foot beyond the Apennines 
as a prelude to the complete subjugation of Italy. 
Lucchino left sons, but none of proved legitimacy ,2 

> Lucchino and Galeazzo Visconti were both afflicted with gout, 
the latter to such an extent as to be almost crippled. 

2 This would not have been by itself a bar to succession in an 
Italian tyranny. But Lucchino's bastards were not of the proper 
stufl to continue their father's government, while their fiery uncle 
was precisely the man to sustain the honor and extend the power of 
the Visconti. 



ARCHBISHOP GIOVANNI. 135 

Consequently he was succeeded by his brother Gio- 
vanni, son of old Matteo il Grande, and Archbishop 
of Milan. This man, the friend of Petrarch, was one 
of the most notable characters of the fourteenth cen- 
tury. Finding himself at the head of sixteen cities, 
he added Bologna to the tyranny of the Visconti in 
1350, and made himself strong enough to defy the 
Pope. Clement VI., resenting his encroachments on 
Papal territory, summoned him to Avignon. Gio- 
vanni Visconti replied that he would march thither at 
the head of 12,000 cavalry and 6,000 infantry. In 
the Duomo of Milan he ascended his throne with the 
crosier in his left hand and a drawn sword in his 
right; and thus he is always represented in pictures. 
The story of Giovanni's answer to the Papal Legate 
is well told by Corio : ^ ' After Mass in the Cathedral 
the great-hearted Archbishop unsheathed a flashing 
sword, which he had girded on his thigh, and with 
his left hand -seized the cross, saying, ** This is my 
spiritual scepter, and I will wield the sword as my 
temporal, in defense of all my empire." ' Afterwards 
he sent couriers to engage lodgings for his soldiers 
and his train for six months. Visitors to Avignon 
found no room in the city, and the Pope was fain to 
decline so terrible a guest. In 1353 Giovanni an- 
nexed Genoa to the Milanese principality, and died 
in 1354, having established the rule of the Visconti 
over the whole of the North of Italy, with the excep- 
tion of Piedmont, Verona, Mantua, Ferrara and Venice. 

» Storia di Milano, 1554, p. 223. 



Ij6 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

The reign of the archbishop Giovanni marks a 
new epoch in the despotism of the Visconti. They 
are now no longer .the successful rivals of the Delia 
Torre family or dependents on imperial caprice, but 
self-made sovereigns, with a well-established power 
in Milan and a wide extent of subject territory. 
Their dynasty, though based on force and main- 
tained by violence, has come to be acknowledged; 
and we shall soon see them allying themselves with 
the royal houses of Europe. After the death of Gio- 
vanni, Matteo's sons were extinct. But Stefano, the 
last of his family, had left three children, who now 
succeeded to the lands and cities of the house. They 
were named Matteo, Bernabo, and Galeazzo. Be- 
tween these three princes a partition of the heritage 
of Giovanni Visconti was effected. Matteo took 
Bologna, Lodi, Piacenza, Parma, Bobbio, and some 
other towns of less importance. Bernabo received 
Cremona, Crema, Brescia, and Bergamo. Galeazzo 
held Como, Novara, Vercelli, Asti, Tortona, and 
Alessandria. Milan and Genoa were to be ruled 
by the three in common. It may here be noticed 
that the dismemberment of Italian despotisms among 
joint-heirs was a not unfrequent source of disturbance 
and a cause of weakness to their dynasties. At the 
same time the practice followed naturally upon the 
illegal nature of the tyrant's title. He dealt with his 
cities as so many pieces of personal property, which 
he could distribute as he chose, not as a coherent 
whole to be bequeathed to one ruler for the common 



MARRIAGE OP THE DUKE OF CLARENCE. 137 

benefit of all his subjects. In consequence of such 
partition, it became the interest of brother to murder 
brother, so as to effect a reconsolidation of the family 
estates. Something of the sort happened on this oc- 
casion. Matteo abandoned himself to bestial sensual- 
ity; and his two brothers, finding him both feeble and 
likely to bring discredit on their rule, caused him X.*: 
be assassinated in i355.^ They then jointly swayed 
the Milanese, with unanimity remarkable in despots. 
Galeazzo was distinguished as the handsomest man 
of his age. He was tall and graceful, with golden 
hair, which he wore in long plaits, or tied up in a 
net, or else loose and crowned with flowers. Fond 
of display and magnificence, he spent much of his 
vast wealth in shows and festivals, and in the building 
of palaces and churches. The same taste for splendor 
led him to seek royal marriages for his children. His 
daughter Violante was wedded to the Duke of Clar- 
ence, son of Edward III. of England, who received 
with her for dowry the sum of 200,000 golden florins, 
as well as five cities bordering on Piedmont.^ It 
must have been a strange experience for this brother 
of the Black Prince, leaving London, where the streets 
were still unpaved, the houses thatched, the beds 
laid on straw, and where wine was sold as medi- 
:ine, to pass into the luxurious palaces of Lombardy, 

> M. Villani, v. 8i. Compare Corio, p. 230. Corio gives the date 
356. 

• Namely, Alba, Cuneo, Carastro, Mondovico, Braida. See Corio, 
^ 238, who adds sententiously, 'il che quasi fu 1* ultima roina del sue 

»l4tO.' 



138 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

walled with marble, and raised high above smooth 
streets of stone. Of his marriage with Violante 
Giovio gives some curious details. He says that 
Galeazzo on this occasion made splendid presents to 
more than 200 Englishmen, so that he was reckoned 
to have outdone the greatest kings in generosity. At 
the banquet Gian Galeazzo, the bride s brother, lead- 
ing a choice company of well-born youths, brought 
to the table with each course fresh gifts.^ ' At one 
time it was a matter of sixty most beautiful horses 
with trappings of silk and silver; at another, plate, 
haivks, hounds, horse-gear, fine cuirasses, suits of 
armor fashioned of wrought steel, helmets adorned 
with crests, surcoats embroidered with pearls, belts, 
precious jewels set in gold, and great quantities of 
cloth of gold and crimson stuff for making raiment. 
Such was the profusion of this banquet that the rem- 
nants taken from the table were enough and to spare 
for 10,000 men.' Petrarch, we may remember, as- 
sisted at this festival and sat among the princes. It 
was thus that Galeazzo displayed his wealth before 
the feudal nobles of the North, and at the same time 
stretched the hand of friendly patronage to the great- 
est literary man of Europe. Meanwhile he also mar- 
ried his son Gian Galeazzo to Isabella, daughter of 
King John of France, spending on this occasion, 
it is said, a similar sum of money for the honor of 
a royal alliance.^ 

• Corio (pp. 239, 240) gives the bill of fare of the banquet. 
^ Sismondi says he gave 600,000 Horins to Charles^ the brother of 
Isabella, but authorities differ about the actual amount. 



TYRANNY OF BERN ABO. 139 

Galeazzo held his court at Pa via. His brother 
reigned at Milan. Bernabo displayed all the worst 
vices of the Visconti. His system of taxation was 
most oppressive, and at the same time so lucrative 
that he was able, according to Giovio s estimate, to 
settle nine of his daughters at an expense of some 
thing like two millions of gold pieces. A curious 
instance of his tyranny relates to his hunting estab- 
lishment. Having saddled his subjects with the keep 
of 5,000 boar-hounds, he appointed officers to go round 
and see whether these brutes were either too lean or 
too well-fed to be in good condition for the chase. 
If anything appeared defective in their management, 
the peasants on whom they were quartered had to 
suffer in their persons and their property.^ This Ber- 
nabo was also remarkable for his cold-blooded cruelty. 
Together with his brother, he devised and caused 
to be publicly announced by edict that State criminals 
would be subjected to a series of tortures extending 

> * Per cagione di questa caccia continoamente teneva cinque mila 

cani, e la maggior parte di quelle distribuiva alia custodia de i citta- 
dini, e anche a i contadini, i quali niun altro cane che quelli potevano 
tenere. Questi due volte il mese erano tenuti a far la mostra. Onde 
trovandoli macri in gran somma di danari erano condannati, e se 
grossi erano, incolpandoli del troppo, erano multati; se morivano, li 
pigliava il tutto. — Corio, p. 247. 

Read M. Villani, vii. 48, for the story of a peasant who was given 
to Bernabo's dogs to be devoured for having killed a hare. Corio 
(p. 247) describes the punishments which he inflicted on his subjects 
who were convicted of poaching — eyes put out, houses bui ned, etc. 
A young man who dreamed of killing a boar had an eye put out and 
a hand cut off because he imprudently recounted his vision of sport 
in sleep. On one occasion he burned two friars who ventured to re- 
monstrate. We may compare Pontanus, ' De Immanitate,' vol. i 
PP« 3^S, 320, for similar cruelty in Ferdinand, King of Naples. 



I40 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

over the space of forty days. In this infernal pro- 
gramme every variety of torment found a place, and 
days of respite were so calculated as to prolong the 
lives of the victims for further suffering, till at last 
there was little left of them that had not been hacked 
and hewed and flayed away.^ To such extremities 
of terrorism were the despots driven In the mainte- 
nance of their Illegal power. 

Galeazzo died in 1378, and was succeeded in his 
own portion of the Visconti domain by his son Gian 
Galleazzo. Now began one of those long, slow, Inter- 
necine struggles which were so common between the 
members of the ruling families In Italy. Bernabo and 
his sons schemed to get possession of the young 
prince's estate. He, on the other hand, determined 
to supplant his uncle, and to reunite the whole Vis- 
conti principality beneath his own sway. Craft was 
the weapon which he chose in this encounter. Shut- 
ting himself up in Pa via, he made no disguise of his 
physical cowardice, which was real, while he simulated 
a timidity of spirit wholly alien to his temperament 
He pretended to be absorbed In religious observances, 
and gradually Induced his uncle and cousins to de- 
spise him as a poor creature whom they could make 
short work of when occasion served. In 1385, having 
thus prepared the way for treason, he avowed his 
intention of proceeding on a pilgrimage to Our Lady 
of Varese. Starting from Pavia with a body guard 
of Germans, he passed near Milan, wh^re his uncle 

* This programme may be read in Sismondi, iv. 28?. 



ClAN GALEAZZO. I4I 

and cousins came forth to meet him. Gian Galeazzo 
feigned a courteous greeting; but when he saw his 
relatives within his grasp, he gave a watchword in 
German to his troops, who surrounded Bernabo and 
look him prisoner with his sons. Gian Galeazzo 
marched immediately into Milan, poisoned his uncle 
in a dungeon, and proclaimed himself sole lord of the 
Visconti hiership.^ 

The reign of Gian Galeazzo, which began with 
this coup-de-main (i 385-1402), forms a very im- 
portant chapter in Italian history. We may first 
see what sort of man he was, and then proceed to 
trace his aims and achievements. Giovio describes 
him as having been a remarkably sedate and thought- 
ful boy, so wise beyond his years that his friends 
feared he would not grow .to man's estate. No 
pleasures in after-life drew him away from busi- 
ness. Hunting, hawking, women, had alike no 
charms for him. He took moderate exercise for 
the preservation of his health, read and meditated 
much, and relaxed himself in conversation with men 
of letters. Pure intellect, in fact, had reached to 
perfect independence in this prince, who was far 
above the boisterous pleasures and violent activi- 
ties of the age in which he lived. In the erection 
of public buildings he was magnificent. The Cer- 
tosa of Pavia and the Duomo of Milan owed their 
foundation to his sense of splendor. At the same 

» The narrative of this coup-de-main may be read with advantage 
in Corio, p. 258. 



142 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

time he cornpleted the palace of Pavia, which his 
father had begun, and which he made the noblest 
dwelling-house in Europe. The University of Pavia 
was raised by him from a state of decadence to 
one of great prosperity, partly by munificent en- 
dowments and partly by a wise choice of professors. 
In his military undertakings he displayed a kindred 
taste for vast engineering projects. He contemplated 
and partly carried out a scheme for turning the Min- 
cio and the Brenta from their channels, and for dry- 
ing up the lagoons of Venice. In this way he pur- 
posed to attack his last great enemy, the Republic 
of S. Mark, upon her strongest point. Yet in the 
midst of these huge designs he was able to attend 
to the most trifling details of economy. His love 
of order was so precise that he may be said to have 
applied the method of a banker's office to the con- 
duct of a state. It was he who invented Bureau- 
cracy by creating a special class of paid clerks and 
secretaries of departments. Their duty consisted in 
committing to books and ledgers the minutest items 
of his private expenditure and the outgoings of his 
public purse; in noting the details of the several 
taxes, so as to be able to present a survey of the 
whole state revenue; and in recording the names 
and qualities and claims of his generals, captains, 
and officials. A separate office was devoted to his 
correspondence, of all of which he kept accurate 
copies.^ By applying this mercantile machinery 

' Giovio is particular upon these points: 'Ho veduto io ne gh 
armari de' suoi Archivi maravio^liosi libri in carta pecora, i quali 



GIAN GALEAZZO'S CHARACTER. I43 

to the management of his vast dominions, at a 
time when public economy was but little under- 
stood in Europe, Gian Galeazzo raised his wealth 
enormously above that of his neighbors. His in- 
come in a single year is said to have amounted to 
[,200,000 golden florins, with the addition of 800,000 
golden florins levied by extraordinary calls.^ The 
personal timidity of this formidable prince prevented 
him from leading his armies in the field. He there- 
fore found it necessary to employ paid generals, and 
took into his service all the chief Condottieri of the 
day, thus giving an impulse to the custom which 
was destined to corrupt the whole military system 
of Italy. Of these men, whom he well knew how 
to choose, he was himself the brain and moving 
principle. He might have boasted that he never 
took a step without calculating the cost, carefully 
considering the object, and proportioning the means 
to his end. How mad to such a man must have 
seemed the Crusaders of previous centuries, or the 
chivalrous Princes of Northern Germany and Bur- 
gundy, who expended their force upon such un 

contencvano d' anno in anno i nomi de' capitani, condottieri, e soldati 
vecchi, e le paghe di ogn' uno, e '1 rotulo delle cavallerie, et delle 
fanterie : v' erano anco registrate le copie delle lettere le quali ncgli 
importantissimi maneggi di far guerra o pace, o egli haveva scritto 
ai principi o haveva ricevuto da loro.' 

» The description given by Corio (pp. 260, 266-68) of the dower in 
money, plate, and jewels brought by Valentina Visconti to Louis 
d'Orleans is a good proof of Gian Galeazzo's wealth. Besides the 
town of Asti, she took with her in money 400,000 golden florins. 
Her gems were estimated at 68,858 florins, and her plate at 1,667 
maiks of Paris. The inventory is curious. 



144 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

profitable and impossible undertakings as the sub- 
jugation, for instance, of Switzerland ! Not a single 
trait in his character reminds us of the Middle Ages, 
unless it be that he was said to care for reliques 
with a superstitious passion worthy of Louis XI. 
Sismondi sums up the description of this extraor- 
dinary despot in the following sentences, which may 
be quoted for their graphic brevity: * False and piti- 
less, he joined to immeasurable ambition a genius 
for enterprise, and to immovable constancy a per- 
sonal timidity which he did not endeavor to conceal. 
The least unexpected motion near him threw him 
into a paroxysm of nervous terror. No prince em- 
ployed so many soldiers to guard his palace, or took 
such multiplied precautions of distrust. He seemed 
K) acknowledge himself the enemy of the whole world. 
But the vices of tyranny had not weakened his abil- 
ity. He employed his immense wealth without prod- 
igality; his finances were always flourishing; his cities 
well garrisoned and victualed; his army well paid; 
all the captains of adventure scattered throughout 
ttaly received pensions from him, and were ready 
to return to his service whenever called upon. He 
encouraged the warriors of the new Italian school; 
he knew well how to distinguish, reward, and win 
their attachment.* ^ Such was the tyrant who aimed 
It nothing less than the reduction of the whole of 
Italy beneath the sway of the Visconti, and who 
might have achieved his purpose had not his career 

• 'History of the Italian Republics* (i vol. Longmans), p. 190. 



THE SCALA DYNASTY. 145 

of conquest been checked by the Republic of Flor- 
ence, and afterwards cut short by a premature death. 
At the time of his accession the Visconti had al- 
ready rooted out the Correggi and Rossi of Parma, 
the Scotti of Piacenza, the Pelavicini of San Donnino, 
the Tornielli of Novara, the Ponzoni and Cavalcabo 
of Cremona, the Beccaria and Languschi of Pavia, 
the Fisiraghi of Lodi, the Brusati of Brescia. Their 
viper had swallowed all these lesser snakes.^ But 
the Carrara family still ruled at Padua, the Gonzaga 
at Mantua, the Este at Ferrara, while the great house 
of Scala was in possession of Verona. Gian Galeaz- 
zo s schemes were first directed against the Scala dy- 
nasty. Founded, like that of the Visconti, upon the 
imperial authority, it rose to its greatest height under 
the Ghibelline general Can Grande and his nephew 
Mastino, in the first half of the fourteenth century 
(1312-51). Mastino had himself cherished the pro- 
ject of an Italian Kingdom; but he died before ap- 
proaching its accomplishment. The degeneracy of 
his house began with his three sons. The two 
younger killed the eldest; of the survivors the 
stronger slew the weaker and then died in 1374, 
leaving his domains to two of his bastards. One 
of these, named Antonio, killed the other in 1381,' 



> II Biscione, or the Great Serpent, was the name commonly given 
to the tyranny of the Visconti (see M. Villani, vi. 8), in allusion to 
their ensign of a naked child issuing from a snake's mouth. 

« Corio, p. 255, tells how the murder was accomplished. Antonio 
tried to make it appear that his brother Bartolommeo had met his 
death in the prosecution of infamous amours. 



146 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

and afterwards fell a prey to the Visconti in 1387. In 
his subjugation of Verona Gian Galeazzo contrived to 
make use of the Carrara family, although these princes 
were allied by marriage to the Scaligers, and had ev- 
er}lhing to lose by their downfall. He next pro- 
ceeded to attack Padua, and gained the co-operation 
of Venice. In 1388 Francesco da Carrara had to 
cede his territory to Visconti s generals, who in the 
same year possessed themselves for him of the Tre- 
visan Marches. It was then that the Venetians saw 
too late the error they had committed in suffering 
Verona and Padua to be annexed by the Visconti, 
when they ought to have been fortified as defenses 
interposed between his growing power and them- 
selves. Having now made himself master of the 
North of Italy ,1 with the exception of Mantua, Fer- 
rara, and Bologna, Gian Galeazzo turned his atten- 
tion to these cities. Alberto d' Este was ruling in 
Ferrara; Francesco da Gonzaga in Mantua. It was 
the Visconti's policy to enfeeble these two princes by 
causing them to appear odious in the eyes of their 
subjects.2 Accordingly he roused the jealousy of the 
Marquis of Ferrara against his nephew Obiizo to 

• Savoy was not in his hands, however, and the MarquJsate of 
Montferrat remained nominally independent, though he held its heir 
in a kind of honorable confinement. Venice, too, remained in for- 
midable neutrality, the spectator of the Visconti's conquests. 

« The policy adopted by the Visconti against whe Estensi and the 
Gonzaghi was that recommended by Machiavelli (Disc, iii, 32) : 
• quando alcuno vuole o che un popolo o un principe levi al tutto 
r animo ad uno accordo, non ci ^ altro modo piu vero, n^ pid stabile, 
che fargli usare qualche grave scelleratezza contro a colui con il q<«^ 
tu non vuoi che 1' accordo si faccia.' 



GIAN GALEAZZO'S DIPLOMACY, 147 

such a pitch that Alberto beheaded him together with 
his mother, burned his wife, and hung a third mem- 
ber of his family, besides torturing to death all the 
supposed accomplices of the unfortunate young man. 
Against the Marquis of Mantua Gian Galeazzo de- 
vised a still more diabolical plot. By forged letters 
and subtly contrived incidents he caused Francesco 
da Gonzaga to suspect his wife of infidelity with his 
secretary.! In a fit of jealous fury Francesco or- 
dered the execution of his wife, the mother of several 
of his children, together with the secretary. Then 
he discovered the Visconti's treason. But it was too 
late for anything but impotent hatred. The infernal 
device had been successful ; the Marquis of Mantua 
was no less discredited than the Marquis of Ferrara 
by his crime. It would seem that these men were 
not of the stamp and caliber to be successful villans, 
and that Gian Galeazzo had reckoned upon this defect 
in their character. Their violence caused them to be 
rather loathed than feared. The whole of Lombardy 
was now prostrate before the Milanese tyrant. Hts 
next move was to set foot in Tuscany. For this 
purpose Pisa had to be acquired; and here again he 
resorted to his devilish policy of inciting other men 
to crimes by which he alone would profit in the long- 
run. Pisa was ruled at that time by the Gambacorta 
family, with an old merchant named Pietro at their 

> This lady was a first cousin as well as sister-in-law of Gian 
Galeazzo Visconti, who in second marriage had taken Caterina, 
daughter of Bemabo Visconti, to wife. This fact makes his perfidy 
the more disgracefuL 



148 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

head. This man had a friend and secretary called 
Jacopo Applano, whom the Visconti persuaded to 
turn Judas, and to entrap and murder his benefactor 
and his children. The assassination took place in 
1392. In 1399 Gherardo, son of Jacopo Appiano, 
who held Pisa at the disposal of Gian Galeazzo, sold 
him this city for 200,000 florins.^ Perugia was next 
attacked. Here Pandolfo, chief of the Baglioni fam- 
ily, held a semi-constitutional authority, which the 
Visconti first helped him to transmute into a tyranny, 
and then, upon Pandolfo's assassination, seized as his 
own.2 All Italy and even Germany had now begun 
to regard the usurpations of the Milanese despot with 
alarm. But the sluggish Emperor Wenceslaus re- 
fused to take action against him; nay, in 1395 he 
granted to the Visconti the investiture of the Duchy 
of Milan for 100,000 florins, reserving only Pa via for 
himself. In 1399 the Duke laid hands on Siena; and 
in the next two years the plague came to his assist- 
ance by enfeebling the ruling families of Lucca and 
Bologna, the Guinizzi and the Bentivogli, so that he 
was now able to take possession of those cities. 

» The Appiani retired to Piombino, where they founded a petty 
despotism. Appiano's crime, which gave a tyranny to his children, 
is similar to that of Tremacoldo, who murdered his masters, the Vis- 
tarini of Lodi, and to that of Luigi Gonzaga, who founded the Ducal 
house of Mantua by the murder of his patron, Passerino Buonacolsi. 

» Pandolfo was murdered in 1393. Gian Galeazzo possessed him- 
self of Perugia in 1400, having paved his way for the usurpation by 
causing Biordo Michelotti, the successor of the Baglioni to be assas- 
sinated by his friend Francesco Guidalotti. It will be noticed that 
he proceeded slowly and surely in the case of each annexation, lick- 
ing over his prey after he had throttled it and before he swallowed 
it, like a boa-constrictor. 



DEATH OF GIAN GALBAZZO. 149 

There remained no power in Italy, except the 
Republic of Florence and the exiled but invincible 
Francesco da Carrara, to withstand his further pro- 
gress. Florence delayed his conquests in Tuscany. 
Francesco managed to return to Padua. Still the 
peril which threatened the whole of Italy was immi- 
nent. The Duke of Milan was in the plenitude of 
manhood — rich, prosperous, and full of mental force. 
His acquisitions were well cemented; his armies in 
good condition; his treasury brim full; his generals 
highly paid. All his lieutenants in city and in camp 
respected the iron will and the deep policy of the 
despot who swayed their action from his arm-chair in 
Milan. He alone knew how to use the brains and 
hands that did him service, to keep them mutually in 
check, and by their regulated action to make himself 
not one but a score of men. At last, when all other 
hope of independence for Italy had failed, the plague 
broke out with fury in Lombardy. Gian Galeazzo 
retired to his isolated fortress of Marignano in order 
to escape infection. Yet there in 1402 he sickened. 
A comet appeared in the sky, to which he pointed as 
a sign of his approaching death — * God could not but 
signalize the end of so supreme a ruler,' he told his 
attendants. He died aged 55. Italy drew a deep 
breath. The danger was passed. 

The systematic plan conceived by Gian Galeazzo 
for the enslavement of Italy, the ability and force of 
intellect which sustained him in its execution, and the 
power with which he bent men to his will, are scarcely 



150 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

more extraordinary than the sudden dissolution of his 
dukedom at his death. Too timid to take the field 
himself, he had trained in his service a band of great 
commanders, among whom Alberico da Barbino, Fa- 
cino Cane, Pandolfo Malatesta, Jacopo dal Verme, 
Gabrino Fondulo, and Ottobon Terzo were the most 
distinguished. As long as he lived and held them in 
leading strings, all went well. But at his death his 
two sons were still mere boys. He had to intrust 
their persons, together with the conduct of his hardly 
won dominions, to these captains in conjunction with 
the Duchess Catherine and a certain Francesco Bar 
bavara. This man had been the Duke's body-ser- 
vant, and was now the paramour of the Duchess. 
The generals refused to act with them; and each 
seized upon such portions of the Visconti inheritance 
as he could most easily acquire. The vast tyranny 
of the first Duke of Milan fell to pieces in a day. 
The whole being based on no legal right, but held 
together artificially by force and skill, its constituent 
parts either reasserted their independence or became 
the prey of adventurers.^ Many scions of the old 
ejected families recovered their authority in the sub-^ 
ject towns. We hear again of the Scotti at Piacenza, 
the Rossi and Correggi at Parma, the Benzoni at 
Crema, the Rusconi at Como, the Soardi and CoUe- 
oni at Bergamo, the Landi at Bobbio, the Cavalcab6 



» The anarchy which prevailed in Lombardy after Gian Galeazzo's 
death makes it difficult to do more than signalize a few of these usur- 
pations. Corio, pp. 292 et seq.. contain the details. 



THE LAST VJSCONTL 151 

at Cremona. Facino Cane appropriated Alessandria; 
Pandolfo Malatesta seized Brescia; Ottonbon Tcrzo 
established himself in Parma. Meanwhile Giovanni 
Maria Visconti was proclaimed Duke of Milan, and 
his brother Filippo Maria occupied Pavia. Gabriello, 
a bastard son of the first duke, fortified himself in 
Crema. 

In the despotic families of Italy, as already hinted, 
tnere was a progressive tendency to degeneration. 
The strain of tyranny sustained by force and craft for 
generations, the abuse of'power and pleasure, the iso- 
lation and the dread in which the despots lived habit- 
ually, bred a kind of hereditary madness.^ In the 
case of Giovanni Maria and Filippo Maria Visconti 
these predisposing causes of insanity were probably 
intensified by the fact that their father and mother 
were first cousins, the grandchildren of Stefano, son 
of Matteo il Grande. Be this as it may, the constitu- 
tional ferocity of the race appeared as monomania in 
Giovanni, and its constitutional timidity as something 
akin to madness in his brother. Gian Maria, Duke 
of Milan in nothing but in name, distinguished him- 
self by cruelty and lust. He used the hounds of his 
ancestors no longer in the chase of boars, but of liv- 
ing men. All the criminals of Milan, and all whom 
he could get denounced as criminals, even the partic- 
ipators in his own enormities, were given up to his 



» I may refer to Dr. Maudsley (Mind and Matter) for a scientific 
statement of the tlieory of madness developed by accumulated and 
hereditary vices. 



15* RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

infernal sport. His huntsman, Squarcia Giramo, 
trained the dogs to their duty by feeding them on 
human flesh, and the duke watched them tear his 
victims in pieces with the avidity of a lunatic.^ In 
141 2 some Milanese nobles succeeded in murdering 
him, and threw his mangled corpse into the street. 
A prostitute is said to have covered it with roses. 
Filippo Maria meanwhile had married the widow of 
Facino Cane, 2 who brought him nearly half a million 
of florins for dowry, together with her husband's sol- 
diers and the cities he had seized after Gian Galeaz- 
zo s death. By the help of this alliance Filippo was 
now gradually recovering the Lombard portion of ..his 
father s dukedom. The minor cities, purged by mur- 
der of their usurpers, once more fell into the grasp 
of the Milanese despot, after a series of domestic and 
political tragedies that drenched their streets with 
blood. Piacenza was utterly depopulated. It is re- 
corded that for the space of a year only three of its 
inhabitants remained within the walls. 

Filippo, the last of the Visconti tyrants, was ex- 



» Corio, p. 301, mentions by name Giovanm da Pusterla and Ber- 
tolino del Maino as 'lacerati da i cani del Duca.' Members of the 
families of these men afterwards helped to kill him. 

' Beatrice di Tenda, the wife of Facino Cane, was twenty years 
older than the Duke of Milan. As soon as the Visconti felt himself 
assured in his duchy, he caused a false accusation to be brought 
against her of adultery with the youthful Michele Oranbelli and, in 
»pite of her innocence, beheaded her in 141 8. Machiavelli relates 
this ict of perfidy with Tacitean conciseness (1st. Fior. lib. i. vol. i. 
p. 55): 'Dipoi per esser grato de' benefici grandi, come sono quasi 
gempre tutti i Principi, accuso Be.itrice sua moglie di stupro e la fece 
morirc* 



FILIPPO MARIA. 153 

tremely ugly, and so sensitive about his ill- formed per- 
son that he scarcely dared to show himself abroad. 
He habitually lived in secret chambers, changed fre- 
quently from room to room, and when he issued from 
his palace refused salutations in the streets. As an 
instance of his nervousness, the chroniclers report that 
he could not endure to hear the noise of thunder.^ 
At the same time he inherited much of his father s in- 
sight into character, and his power of controlling men 
more bold and active than himself. But he lacked 
the keen decision and broad views of Gian Galeazzo. 
He vacillated in policy and kept planning plots which 
seemed to have no object but his own disadvantage. 
Excess of caution made him surround the captains of 
his troops with spies, and check them at the moment 
when he feared they might become too powerful. 
This want of confidence neutralized the advantage 
which he might have gained by his choice of fitting 
instruments. Thus his selection of Francesco Sforza 
for his general against the Venetians in 143 1 was a 
wise one. But he could not attach the great soldier 
of fortjune to himself. Sforza took the pay of Flor- 
ence against his old patron, and in 1441 forced him 
to a ruinous peace; one of the conditions of which 
was the marriage of the Duke of Milan s only daugh- 

» The most complete account of Filippo Maria Visconti written 
by a contemporary is that of Piero Candido Decembrio (Muratori, 
vol. XX.). The student must, however, read between the lines of this 
biography, for Decembrio, at the request of Leoirello d* Este, sup- 
pressed the darker colors of the portrait of his master. See the cor- 
respondence in Rosmini's Life of Guarino da Verona. 



154 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

ter, Bianca, to the son of the peasant of Cotignola 
Bianca was illegitimate, and Filippo Maria had no 
male heir. The great family of the Visconti had 
dwindled away. Consequently, after the duke s death 
in 1447, Sforza found his way open to the Duchy of 
Milan, which he first secured by force and then 
claimed in right of his wife. An adverse claim was 
set up by the House of Orleans, Louis of Orleans 
having married Valentina, the legitimate daughter of 
Gian Galeazzo.^ But both of these claims were in- 
valid, since the investiture granted by Wenceslaus to 
the first duke excluded females. So Milan was once 
again thrown open to the competition of usurpers. 

The inextinguishable desire for liberty in Milan 
blazed forth upon the death of the last duke. In 
spite of so many generations of despots, the people 
still regarded themselves as sovereign, and established 
a republic. But a state which had served the Visconti 
for nearly two centuries, could not in a moment shake 
off its weakness and rely upon itself alone. The 
republic, feeling the necessity of mercenary aid, was 
short-sighted enough to engage Francesco Sforza as 

> This claim of the House of Orleans to Milan was one source ot 
French interference in Italian affairs. Judged by Italian custom, 
Sforza's claim through Bianca was as good as that of the Orleans 
princes through Valentina, since bastardy was no real bar in the 
peninsula. It is said that Filippo Maria bequeathed his duchy to 
the Crown of Naples, by a will destroyed after his death. Could this 
bequest have taken effect, it might have united Italy beneath one sov- 
ereign. But the probabilities are that the jealousies of Florence, 
Venice, and Rome against Naples would have been so intensified 
as to lead to a, bloody war of succession, and to hasten the French 
iuvasTon 



FRANCESCO SFORZA. 1 55 

commander-in-chief against the Venetians, who had 
availed themselves of the anarchy in Lombardy to 
push their power west of the Adda. 

Sforza, though the ablest general of the day, was 
precisely the man whom common prudence should 
have prompted the burghers to mistrust. In one bril- 
liant campaign he drove the Venetians back beyond 
the Adda, burned their fleet at Casal Maggiore on the 
Po, and utterly defeated their army at Caravaggio. 
Then he returned as conqueror to Milan, reduced the 
surrounding cities, blockaded the Milanese in their 
capital, and forced them to receive him as their Duke 
in 1450. Italy had lost a noble opportunity. If 
Florence and Venice had but taken part with Milan, 
and had stimulated the flagging energies of Genoa, 
four powerful republics in federation might have main- 
tained the freedom of the whole peninsula and have 
resisted foreign interference. But Cosimo de' Medici, 
who was silently founding the despotism of his own 
family in Florence, preferred to see a duke in Milan; 
and Venice, guided by the Doge Francesco Foscari, 
thought only of territorial aggrandizement. The 
chance was lost. The liberties of Milan were extin- 
guished. A new dynasty was established in the 
duchy, grounded on a false hereditary claim, which, 
as long as it continued, gave a sort of color to the 
superior but still illegal pretensions of the house of 
Orleans. It is impossible at this point in the history 
of Italy to refrain from judging that the Italians had 
become incapable of local self-government, and that 



156 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

the prevailing tendency to despotism was not the re- 
sults of accidents in any combination, but of internal 
and inevitable laws of evolution. 

It was at this period that the old despotisms 
founded by Imperial Vicars and Captains of the 
People came to be supplanted or crossed by those of 
military adventurers, just as at a somewhat later time 
the Condottiere and the Pope's nominee were blent in 
Cesare Borgia. This is therefore the proper moment 
for glancing at the rise and influence of mercenary 
generals in Italy, before proceeding to sketch the 
history of the Sforza family. 

After the wars in Sicily, carried on by the Ange- 
vine princes, had ceased (1302), a body of disbanded 
soldiers, chiefly foreigners, was formed under Fra 
Ruggieri, a Templar, and swept the South of Italy. 
Giovanni Villani marks this as the first sign of the 
scourge which was destined to prove so fatal to the 
peace of Italy.^ But it was not any merely accidental 
outbreak of Banditti, such as this, which established 
the Condottiere system. The causes were far more 
deeply seated, in the nature of Italian despotism and 
in the peculiar requirements of the republics. We 
have already seen how Frederick II. found it conven- 
ient to employ Saracens in his warfare with the Holy 
See. The same desire to procure troops incapable 
of sympathizing with the native population induced the 
Scala and Visconti tyrants to hire German, Breton, 
Swiss, English, and even Hungarian guards. These 

• VIII. SI. 



ORIGIN OF MERCENARIES. 157 

foreign troops remained at the disposal of the tyrants 
and superseded the national militia. The people of 
Italy were reserved for taxation; the foreigners carried 
on the wars of the princes. Nor was this policy other- 
wise than popular. It relieved all classes from the 
conscription, leaving the burgher free to ply his trade, 
the peasant to till his fields, and disarming the nobles 
who were still rebellious and turbulent within the city- 
walls. The same custom gained ground among the 
Republics. Rich Florentine citizens preferred to stay 
at home at ease, or to travel abroad for commerce, 
while they intrusted their military operations to paid 
generals.^ Venice, jealous of her own citizens, raised 
no levies in her immediate territory, and made a rule 
of never confiding her armies to Venetians. Her 
admirals, indeed, were selected from the great families 
of the Lagoons. But her troops were placed beneath 
the discipline of foreigners. The warfare of the 
Church, again, had of necessity to be conducted on 
the same principles; for it did not often happen that a 
Pope arose like Julius II., rejoicing in the sound of 
cannon and the life of camps. In this way principali- 
ties and republics gradually denationalized their armies, 
and came to carrying on campaigns by the aid of 
foreign mercenaries under paid commanders. The 
generals, wishing as far as possible to render their 
troops movable and compact, suppressed the infantry, 

» We may remember how the Spanish general Cardona, in 1325, 
misused his captaincy of the Florentine forces to keep rich members 
of the republican militia in unhealthy stations, extorting money from 
them as the price of freedom from perilous or irksome service. 



158 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

and confined their attention to perfecting the cavalry. 
Heavy-armed cavaliers, officered by professional cap- 
tains, fought the- battles of Italy; while despots and 
republics schemed in their castles, or debated in their 
council-chambers, concerning objects of warfare about 
which the soldiers of fortune were indifferent The pay 
received by men-at-arms was more considerable than 
that of the most skilled laborers in any peaceful trade. 
The perils of military service in Italy, conducted on 
the most artificial principles, were but slight; while the 
opportunities of self-indulgence — of pillage during war 
and of pleasure in the brief intervals of peace — attracted 
all the hot blood of the country to this service.^ There- 
fore, in course of time, the profession of Condottiere 
fascinated the needier nobility of Italy, and the ranks 
of their men-at-arms were recruited by townsfolk and 
peasants, who deliberately chose a life of adventure 
At first the foreign troops of the despots were 
engaged as body-guards, and were controlled by the 
authority of their employers. But the captains soon 
rendered themselves independent, and entered into 
military contracts on their own account. The first 
notable example of a roving troop existing for thr 
sake of pillage, and selling its services to any bid 
der, was the so-called Great Company (1343), com- 
manded by the German Guarnieri, or Duke Werner 
who wrote upon his corselet : * Enemy of God, of Pity 

» Matatazzo, in his Chronicle of Perugia, gives a lively picture of 
an Italian city, in which the nobles for generations followed the trade 
of Condottieri, while the people enlisted in their bands — to the uUex 
ruin of the morals and the peace of the community. 



BRACCIO AND SFORZA. 1 59 

and of Mercy.* This band was employed in 1348 
by the league of the Montferrat, La Scala, Carrara, 
Este, and Gonzaga houses, formed to check the 
Visconti. 

* In the middle of the fourteenth century,' writes 
Sismondi,^ * all the soldiers who served in Italy were 
foreigners : at the end of the same century they were 
all, or nearly all, Italian/ This sentence indicates a 
most important change in the Condottiere system, 
which took place during the lifetime of Gian Gal- 
eazzo Visconti. Alberico da Barbiano, a noble of 
Romagna, and the ancestor of the Milanese house 
of Belgiojoso, adopted the career of Condottiere, 
and formed a Company, called the Company of S. 
George, into which he admitted none but Italians 
The consequence of this rule was that he Italianized 
the profession of mercenary arms for the future. All 
the great captains of the period were formed in his 
ranks, during the course of those wars which he con- 
ducted for the Duke of Milan. Two rose to para- 
mount importance — Braccio da Montone, who varied 
his master's system by substituting the tactics of de- 
tached bodies of cavalry for the solid phalanx in which 
Barbiano had moved his troops; and Sforza Attendolo, 
who adhered to the old method. Sforza got his name 
from his great physical strength. He was a peasant 
of the village of Cotignola, who, being invited to quit 
the mattock for a sword, threw his pickax into an 
oak, and cried, * If it stays there, it is a sign that I 

« Vol. V. p^ 207. 



l6o RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

shall make my fortune/ The ax stuck in the tree, 
and Sforza went forth to found a line of dukes.^ After 
the death of Barbiano in 1409, Sforza and Braccio 
separated and formed two distinct companies, known 
as the Sforzeschi and Bracceschi, who carried on be- 
tween them, sometimes in combination, but usually 
in opposition, all the wars of Italy for the next twenty 
years. These old comrades, who had parted in pur- 
suit of their several advantage, found that they had 
more to lose than to gain by defeating each other 
in any bloody or inconveniently decisive engagement 
Therefore they adopted systems of campaigning which 
should cost them as little as possible, but which en- 
abled them to exhibit a chess-player's capacity for 
designing clever checkmates.^ Both Braccio and 
Sforza died in 1424, and were succeeded respect- 

> This is the commonly received legend. Corio, p. 255, does no' 
draw attention to the lowness of Sforza's origin, but says that he wa^- 
only twelve years of age when he enlisted in the corps of Boldrino d> 
Panigale, condottiere of the Church. His robust physical qualities 
were hereditary for many generations in his family. His son Fran- 
cesco was tall and well made, the best runner, jumper, and wrestler 
of his day. He marched, summer and winter, bareheaded; needec* 
but little sleep; was spare in diet, and self-indulgent only in the mat 
ter of women. Galeazzo Maria, though stained by despicable vices 
was a powerful prince, who ruled his duchy with a strong arm. Oi 
his illegitimate daughter, Caterina, the wife of Girolamo Riario, » 
story is told, which illustrates the strong coarse vein that still dis- 
tinguished this brood of princes. [See Dennistoun, ' Dukes of 
Urbino,* vol. i. p. 292, for Boccalini's account of the Siege of Forli, 
sustained by Caterina in 1488. Compare Sismondi, vol. vii. p. 251.] 
Caterina Riario Sforza, as a woman, was no unworthy inheritor of 
her grandfather's personal heroism and genius for government. 

« I shall have to notice the evils of this system in another place, 
while reviewing the Principe of Machiavelli. In that treatise the 
Florentine historian traces the whole ruin of Italy during the six- 
teenth century to the employment of mercenaries. 



CARMAGNUOLA. I6l 

ively by Nicolo Piccinino and Francesco Sforza. 
These two men became in their turn the chief 
champions of Italy. At the same time other Con- 
dottieri rose into notice. The Malatesta family at 
Rimini, the ducal house of Urbino, the Orsini and the 
Vitelli of the Roman States, the Varani of Camerino, 
the Baglioni of Perugia, and the younger Gonzaghi 
furnished republics and princes with professional lead- 
ers of tried skill and independent resources. The 
vassals of these noble houses were turned into men- 
at-arms, and the chiefs acquired more importance in 
their roving military life than they could have gained 
within the narrow circuit of their little states. 

The biography of one of these Condottieri de- 
serves special notice, since it illustrates the vicissi- 
tudes of fortune to which such men were exposed, 
as well as their relations to their patrons. Francesco 
Carmagnuola was a Piedmontese. He first rose into 
notice at the battle of Monza in 141 2, when Filippo 
Maria Visconti observed his capacity and bravery, 
and afterwards advanced him to the captaincy of a 
troop.. Having helped to reduce the Visconti duchy 
to order, Carmagnuola found himself disgraced and 
suspected without good reason by the Duke of Milan; 
and in 1426 he took the pay of the Venetians against 
his old master. During the next year he showed the 
eminence of his abilities as a general ; for he defeated 
the combined forces of Piccinino, Sforza, and other 
captains of the Visconti, and took them prisoners at 
Macalo. Carmagnuola neither imprisoned nor mur- 



1 62 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

dered his foes.^ He gave them their liberty, and 
four years later had to sustain a defeat from Sforza at 
Soncino. Other reverses of fortune followed, which 
brought upon him the suspicion of bad faith or in- 
capacity. When he returned to Venice, the state 
received their captain with all honors, and displayed 
unusual pomp in his admission to the audience of 
the Council. But no sooner had their velvet clutches 
closed upon him, than they threw him into prison, 
instituted a secret impeachment of his conduct, and 
on May 5, 1432, led him out with his mouth gagged 
to execution on the Piazza. No reason was assigned 
for this judicial murder. Had Carmagnuola been con- 
victed of treason? Was he being punished for his 
ill success in the campaign of the preceding years? 
The Republic of Venice, by the secrecy in which she 
enveloped this dark act of vengeance, sought to in- 
spire the whole body of her officials with vague alarm. 

> Such an act of violence, however consistent with the morality 
of a Cesare Borgia, a Venetian Republic, or a Duke of Milan, would 
have been directly opposed to the code of honor in use among Con- 
dottieri. Nothing, indeed, is more singular among the contradic- 
tions of this period than the humanity in the field displayed by hired 
captains. W'ar was made less on adverse armies than on the popu- 
lation of provinces. The adventurers respected each other's lives, 
and treated each other with courtesy. They were a brotherhood 
who played at campaigning, rather than the representatives offerees 
seriously bent on crushing each other to extermination. Machiavelli 
says (Princ. cap. xii.) ' Aveano usato ogni industria per levar via a se 
e a' soldati la fatica e la paura, non s'ammazzando nelle zuffe, ma 
pigliandosi prigioni e senza taglia.' At the same time the license 
they allowed themselves against the cities and the districts they in- 
vaded is well illustrated by the pillage of Piacenza in 1447 by Fran- 
cesco Sforza's troops. The anarchy of a sack lasted forty days, dur- 
ing which the inhabitants were indiscriminately sold as slaves, 01 
tortured for their hidden treasure. Sism. vi. 170. 



THE SFORZA DYNASTY, 1 63 

But to return to the Duchy of Milan. Francesco 
Sforza entered the capital as conqueror in 1450, and 
was proclaimed Duke. He never obtained the sanc- 
tion of the Empire to his title, though Frederick III. 
was proverbially lavish of such honors. But the great 
Condottiere, possessing the substance, did not care 
for the external show of monarchy. He ruled firmly, 
wisely, and for those times well, attending to the 
prosperity of his states, maintaining good discipline 
in his cities, and losing no ground by foolish or 
ambitious schemes. Louis XL of France is said to 
have professed himself Sforza's pupil in statecraft, 
than which no greater tribute could be paid to his 
political sagacity. In 1466 he died, leaving three 
sons, Galeazzo, Duke of Milan, the Cardinal Ascanio, 
and Lodovico, surnamed II Moro. 

* Francesco's crown,' says Ripamonti, * was des- 
tined to pass to more than six inheritors, and these 
five successions were accomplished by a series of 
tragic events in his family. Galeazzo, his son, was 
murdered because of his abominable crimes, in the 
presence of his people, before the altar, in the mid- 
dle of the sacred rites. Giovanni Galeazzo, who fol- 
lowed him, was poisoned by his uncle Lodovico. 
Lodovico was imprisoned by the French, and died 
of grief in a dungeon.^ One of his sons perished in 
the same way; the other, after years of misery and 

» in the castle of Loches, there is said to be a roughly painted 
wall-picture of a man in a helmet over the chimney in the room 
known as his prison, with this legend, Voild un qui n'est pas con- 
ttni. Tradition gives It to II Moro. 



1 64 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

exile, was restored in his childless old age to a 
throne which had been undermined, and when he 
died, his dynasty was extinct. This was the recom- 
pense for the treason of Francesco to the State of 
Milan. It was for such successes that he passed his 
life in perfidy, privation, and danger.' In these 
rapid successions we trace, besides the demoral- 
ization of the Sforza family, the action of new 
forces from without. France, Germany, and Spain 
appeared upon the stage; and against these great 
powers the policy of Italian despotism was helpless. 
We have now reached the threshold of the true 
Renaissance, and a new period is being opened for 
Italian politics. The despots are about to meas- 
ure their strength with the nations of the North. 
It was Lodovico Sforza who, by his invitation of 
Charles VIII. into Italy, inaugurated the age of For- 
eign Enslavement. His biography belongs, there- 
fore, to another chapter. But the life of Galeazzo 
Maria, husband of Bona of Savoy, and uncle by 
marriage to Charles VIII. of France, forms an in- 
tegral part of that history of the Milanese despots 
which we have hitherto been tracing. In him the 
passions of Gian Maria Visconti were repeated with 
the addition of extravagant vanity. We may notice 
in particular his parade -expedition in 1471 to Flor- 
ence, when he flaunted the wealth extorted from 
his Milanese subjects before the soberminded citizens 
of a still free city. Fifty palfreys for the Duchess, 
fifty chargers for the Duke, trapped in cloth of gold; 



GALEA ZZO MARIA SFORZA, 165 

a hundred men-at-arms and five hundred foot sol- 
diers for a body-guard; five hundred couples of 
hounds and a multitude of hawks; preceded him. 
His suite of courtiers numbered two thousand on 
horseback: 200,000 golden florins were expended 
on this pomp. Machiavelli (1st. Fior. lib. 7) marks 
this visit of the Duke of Milan as a turning-point 
from austere simplicity to luxury and license in the 
manners of the Florentines, whom Lorenzo de' 
Medici was already bending to his yoke. The 
most extravagant lust, the meanest and the vilest 
cruelty, supplied Galeazzo Maria with daily recrea- 
tion.^ He it was who used to feed his victims on 
abominations or to bury them alive, and who found 
a pleasure in wounding or degrading those whom 
he had made his confidants, and friends. The de- 
tails of his assassination, in 1476, though well known, 
are so interesting that I may be excused for paus- 
ing to repeat them here; especially as they illustrate 
a moral characteristic of this period which is inti- 
mately connected with the despotism. Three young 
nobles of Milan, educated in the classic literature 
by Montano, a distinguished Bolognese scholar, had 
imbibed from their studies of Greek and Latin his- 
tory an ardent thirst for liberty and a deadly hatred 
of tyrants.2 Their names were Carlo Visconti, Giro- 

» Allegretto Allegretti, Diari Sanesi, in Muratori, xxiii. p. 'j'j'j , and 
Corio, p. 425, should be read for the details of his pleasures. See too 
his character by Machiavelli, 1st. Fior. lib. 7, vol. ii. p. 316. Yet 
Giovio calls him a just and firm ruler, stained only with the vice ot 
unbridled sensuality. 

« The study of the classics, especially of Plutarch, at this time, as 



l66 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

lamo Olgiati, and Giannandrea Lampugnani. Gale- 
azzo Sforza had wounded the two latter in the points 
which men hold deatrest — their honor and their prop- 
erty^ — by outraging the sister of Olgiati and by 
depriving Lampugnani of the patronage of the Ab- 
bey of Miramondo. The spirit of Harmodius and 
Virginius was kindled in the friends, and they de- 
termined to rid Milan of her despot. After some 
meetings in the garden of S. Ambrogio, where they 
matured their plans, they laid their project of tyran- 
nicide as a holy offering before the patron saint 
of Milan.2 Then having spent a few days in poig- 
nard exercise for the sake of training,^ they took 
their place within the precincts of S. Stephen's 
Church. There they received the sacrament and 
addressed themselves in prayer to the Protomartyr, 
whose fane was about to be hallowed by the murder 
of a monster odious to God and man. It was on 
the morning of December 26, 1476, that the duke 
entered San Stefano. At one and the same moment 
the daggers of the three conspirators struck him — 

also during the French Revolution, fired the imagination of patriots. 
Lorenzino de' Medici appealed to the example of Timoleon in 1537, 
and Pietro Paolo Boscoli to that of Brutus in 1513. 

> ' Le ingiurie conviene che siano nella roba, nel sangue, o nell' 
onore .... La roba e I'onore sono quelle due cose che offendono 
piu gli uomini che alcun' altra offesa, e dalle quali il principe si debbe 
guardare : perch^ e' non puo mai spogliare uno tanto che non gli 
resti un coltello da vendicarsi; non pub tanto disonorare uno che 
non gli resti un animo ostinato alia vendetta.' Mach. Disc. iii. 6. 

« See Olgiati's prayer to Saint Ambrose in Sismondi, vii. 87, and 
in Mach. 1st. Fior. lib. 7. 

> Giovanni Sanzi's chronicle, quoted by Dennistoun, vol. i. p. 223, 
describes the conspirators rehearsing on a wooden puppet 



TYRANNICIDE, 167 

Olgiati s in the breast, Visconti's in the back, Lam- 
pugnani s in the belly. He cried * Ah, Dio ! ' and 
fell dead upon the pavement. The friends were 
unable to make their escape; Visconti and Lam- 
pugnani were killed on the spot; Olgiati was seized, 
tortured, and torn to death. 

In the interval which elapsed between the rack 
and the pincers, Olgiati had time to address this 
memorable speech to the priest who urged him to 
repent : * As for the noble action for which I am 
about to die, it is this which gives my conscience 
peace; to this I trust for pardon from the Judge of 
all. Far from repenting, if I had to come ten times 
to life in order ten times to die by these same tor- 
ments, I should not hesitate to dedicate my blood 
and all my powers to an object so sublime.' When 
the hangman stood above him, ready to begin the 
work of mutilation, he is said to have exclaimed: 
* Mors acerba, fama perpetua, stabit vetus memora 
facti — my death is untimely, my fame eternal, the 
memory of the deed will last for aye.' He was only 
twenty-two years of age.^ There is an antique 
grandeur about the outlines of this story, strangely 
mingled with mediaeval Catholicism in the details, 
which makes it typical of the Renaissance. Con- 
spiracies against rulers were common at the time in 

> The whole story may be read in Ripamonti, under the head of 
'Confessio Olgiati; ' in Corio, who was a page of the Duke's and an 
eye-witness of the murder; and in the seventh book of Machiavelli's 
' History.' Sismondi's summary and references, vol. vii. pp. 86-90, 
are very fulL 



1 68 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

Italy; but none were so pure and honorable as this. 
Of the Pazzi Conjuration (1478) which Sixtus IV. 
directed to his everlasting infamy against the Medici, 
I shall have to speak in another place. It is enough 
to mention here in passing the patriotic attempt of 
Girolamo Gentile against Galeazzo Sforza at Genoa 
in 1476, and the more selfish plot of Nicolo d' Este, 
in the same year, against his uncle Ercole, who held 
the Marquisate of Ferrara to the prejudice of his own 
claim. The latter tragedy was rendered memorable 
by the vengeance taken by Ercole. He beheaded 
Nicolo and his cousin Azzo together with twenty -five 
of his comrades, effectually preventing by this blood- 
shed any future attempt to set aside his title. Fall- 
ing as these four conspiracies do within the space of 
two years, and displaying varied features of antique 
heroism, simple patriotism, dynastic dissension, and 
ecclesiastical perfidy, they present examples of the 
different forms and causes of political tragedies with 
a noteworthy and significant conciseness.^ 

Such was the actual condition of Italy at the end 
of the fifteenth century. Neither public nor private 
morality in our sense of the word existed. The 



» It is worthy of notice that very many tyrannicides took place in 
Church — for example, the murders of Francesco Vico dei Prefetti, of 
the Varani, the Chiavelli, Giuliano de* Medici, and Galeazzo Maria 
Sforza. The choice of public service, as the best occasion for the 
commission of these crimes, points to the guarded watchfulness 
maintained by tyrants in their palaces and on the streets. Banquets 
and festivities offered another kind of opportunity; and it was on 
such occasions that domestic tragedies, like Oliverotto's murder of 
his uncle and Grifonetto Bag? oni's treason, were accomplished. 



CRIMES OF VIOLENCE. 1 69 

crimes of the tyrants against their subjects and the 
members of their own families had produced a correl- 
ative order of crime in the people over whom they 
tyrannized. Cruelty was met by conspiracy. Ty- 
rannicide became honorable ; and the proverb, * He 
who gives his own life can take a tyrant's/ had 
worked itself into popular language. At this point 
it may be well to glance at the opinions concerning 
public murder which prevailed in Italy. Machiavelli, 
in the Discorsi iii. 6, discusses the whole subject 
with his usual frigid and exhaustive analysis. It is 
no part of his critical method to consider the morality 
of the matter. He deals with the facts of history sci- 
entifically. The esteem in which tyrannicide was held 
at Florence is proved by the erection of Donatello's 
Judith in 1495, at the gate of the Palazzo Pubblico, 
with this inscription, exemplum salutis publicce cives 
posuere. All the political theorists agree that to rid 
a state of its despot is a virtuous act They only 
differ about its motives and its utility. In Guic- 
ciardini's Reggimento di Firenze (Op. Ined. vol. ii. 
pp. 53, 54, 114) the various motives of tyrannicide 
are discussed, and it is concluded XhsX pockissimi sono 
stati quelli che si siano mossi meramente per amore 
della libertcL della sua patriay a quali si conviene 
suprema laude} Donato Giannotti (Opere, vol. i. 
p. 341) bids the conspirator consider whether the 

» • Very few indeed have those been, whose motive for tyrannicide 
was a pure love of their country's liberty; and these deserve the high- 
est praise,' 



IT© RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

mere destruction of the despot will suffice to re- 
store his city to true liberty and good government — 
a caution by which Lorenzino de' Medici in his assas- 
sination of Duke Alessandro might have profited; for 
he killed one tyrant in order only to make room for 
another. Lorenzino's own Apology (Varchi, vol. iii. 
pp. 283-295) is an important document, as showing 
that the murderer of a despot counted on the sym- 
pathy of honorable men. So, too, is the verdict of 
Boscolo s confessor (Arch. Stor. vol. i. p. 309), who 
pronounced that conspiracy against a tyrant was no 
crime. Nor did the demoralization of the age stop 
here. Force, which had been substituted for Law in 
government, became, as it were, the mainspring of 
society. Murders, poisoning, rapes, and treasons 
were common incidents of private as of public life.^ 
In cities like Naples bloodguilt could be atoned at 
an inconceivably low rate. A man's life was worth 
scarcely more than that of a horse. The palaces of 
the nobles swarmed with professional cut-throats, and 
the great ecclesiastics claimed for their abodes the 
right of sanctuary. Popes sold absolution for the 

» It is quite impossible to furnish a complete view of Italian soci'^^ty 
under this aspect. Students must be referred to the stories of the 
novelists, who collected the more dramatic incidents and presented 
them in the form of entertaining legends. It may suffice here ♦o 
mention Bartolommeo Colleoni, Angelo Poliziano, and Pontano, a'* 
of whom owed their start in life to the murder of their respective 
fathers by assassins; to Varchi and Filelfo, whose lives were at- 
tempted by cut-throats; to Cellini, Perugino, Masaccio, Berni, in 
each of whose biographies poison and the knife play their parts. If 
men of letters and artists were exposed to these perils, the dangers 
of the great and noble may be readily imagined. 



ART AND CULTURE. 171 

most horrible excesses, and granted indulgences be- 
forehand for the commission of crimes of lust and 
violence. Success was the standard by which acts 
were judged; and the man who could help his friends, 
intimidate his enemies, and carve a way to fortune 
for himself by any means he chose, was regarded as 
a hero. Machiavelli's use of the word virtu is in this 
relation most instructive. It has altogether lost the 
Christian sense of virtue, and retains only so much 
of the Roman virtus as is applicable to the courage, 
intellectual ability, and personal prowess of one who 
has achieved his purpose, be that what it may. The 
upshot of this state of things was that individuality 
of character and genius obtained a freer scope at this 
time in Italy than during any other period of modern 
history. 

At the same time it must not be forgotten that 
during this period the art and culture of the Renais- 
sance were culminating. Filelfo was receiving the 
gold of Filippo Maria Visconti. Guarino of Verona 
was instructing the heir of Ferrara, and Vittorino da 
Feltre was educating the children of the Marquis of 
Mantua. Lionardo was delighting Milan with his 
music and his magic world of painting. Poliziano was 
pouring forth honeyed eloquence at Florence. Ficino 
was expounding Plato. Boiardo was singing the pre- 
lude to Ariosto's melodies at Ferrara. Pico della Mi- 
randola was dreaming of a reconciliation of the Hebrew, 
Pagan, and Christian traditions. It is necessary to 
note these facts in passing; just as when we are sur- 



I7« RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

veying the history of letters and the arts, it becomes 
us to remember the crimes and the madness of the 
despots who patronized thern. This was an age in 
which even the wildest and most perfidious of tyrants 
felt the ennobling influences and the sacred thirst of 
knowledge. Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, the 
Lord of Rimini, might be selected as a true type of 
the princes who united a romantic zeal for culture 
with the vices of barbarians.^ The coins which bear 
the portraits of this man, together with the medallions 
carved in red Verona marble on his church at Rimini, 
show a narrow forehead, protuberant above bushy 
eyebrows, a long hooked nose, hollow cheeks, and 
petulant, passionate, compressed lips. The whole 
face seems ready to flash with sudden violence, to 
merge its self-control in a spasm of fury. Sigismondo 
Pandolfo Malatesta killed three wives in succession, 
violated his daughter, and attempted the chastity of 
his own son. So much of him belongs to the mere 
savage. He caused the magnificent church of S. 
Francesco at Rimini to be raised by Leo Alberti in a 
manner more worthy of a Pagan Pantheon than of a 
Christian temple. He incrusted it with exquisite 
bas-reliefs in marble, the triumphs of the earliest 
Renaissance style, carved his own name and ensigns 
upon every scroll and frieze and point of vantage in 
the building, and dedicated a shrine there to his ron- 
cubine — Divce Isottce Sacrum, So much of him be- 

» For a fuller account of him, see ny 'Sketches in *al} an4 
Greece/ article Rttnini, 



SIGISMONDO MALATESTA. 1 73 

longs to the Neo-Pagan of the fifteenth century. He 
brought back from Greece the mortal remains of the 
philosopher Gemistos Plethon, buried them in a sar- 
cophagus outside his church, and wrote upon the 
tomb this epigraph: * These remains of Gemistus of 
Byzantium, chief of the sages of his day, Sigismondo 
Pandolfo Malatesta, son of Pandolfo, commander in 
the war against the king of the Turks in the Morea, 
induced by the mighty love with which he burns for 
men of learning, brought hither and placed within 
this chest. 1466.* He, the most fretful and turbu- 
lent of men, read books with patient care, and bore 
the contradictions of pedants in the course of long 
discussions on philosophy and arts and letters. So 
much of him belonged to the new spirit of the com- 
ing age, in which the zeal for erudition was a pas- 
sion, and the spell of science was stronger than the 
charms of love. At the same time, as Condottiere, 
he displayed all the treasons, duplicities, cruelties, 
sacrileges, and tortuous policies to which the most 
accomplished villain of the age could have aspired 
It would be easy, following in the steps of Tira- 
boschi, to describe the patronage awarded in the 
fifteenth century to men of letters by princes — 
the protection extended by Nicholas III. of Ferrara 
to Guarino and Aurispa — the brilliant promise of his 
son Leonello, who corresponded with Poggio, Filelfo, 
Guarino, Francesco Barbaro, and other scholars — 
the liberality of Duke Borso, whose purse was open 
to poor students. Or we might review the splendid 



174 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

culture of the court of Naples, where Alfonso com 
mitted the education of his terrible son Ferdinand to 
the care of Lorenzo Valla and Antonio Beccadelli.* 
More insight, however, into the nature of Italian des- 
potism in all its phases may be gained by turning 
from Milan to Urbino, and by sketching a portrait of 
the good Duke Frederick.^ The life of Frederick, 
Count of Montefeltro, created Duke of Urbino in 
1474 by Pope Sixtus IV., covers the better part of 
the fifteenth century (b. 1422, d. 1482). A little cor- 
ner of old Umbria lying between the Apennines and 
the Adriatic, Rimini and Ancona, formed his patri- 
mony. Speaking roughly, the whole duchy was but 
forty miles square, and the larger portion consisted of 
bare hillsides and ruinous ravines. Yet this poor ter- 
ritory became the center of a splendid court. * Fed- 
erigo,* says his biographer, Muzio, * maintained a suite 
so numerous and distinguished as to rival any royal 
household.' The chivalry of Italy flocked to Urbino 
in order to learn manners and the art of war from the 
most noble general of his day. * His household,' we 
hear from Vespasiano, ' which consisted of 5oo mouths 
entertained at his own cost, was governed less like a 

> The Panormita; author, by the way, of the shameless • Herma- 
phroditus.' This fact is significant. The moral sense was extinct 
when such a pupil was intrusted to such a tutor. 

« For the following details I am principally indebted to 'The 
Memoirs of the Dukes of Urbino,' by James Dennistoun; 3 vols., 
Longmans, 1851. Vespasiano's Life of Duke Frederick (Vite di 
uomini illustri, pp. 72-112) is one of the most charming literary por- 
traits extant. It has, moreover, all the value of a personal memoir, 
for Vespasiano had lived in close relation with the Duke as hu 
librarian. 



FREDERICK OF URBINO. 1 75 

company of soldiers than a strict religious community. 
There was no gaming nor swearing, but the men con- 
versed with the utmost sobriety.' In a list of the 
court officers we find forty-five counts of the duchy 
and of other states, seventeen gentlemen, five secre- 
taries, four teachers of grammar, logic, and philosophy 
fourteen clerks in public offices, five architects and 
engineers, five readers during meals, four transcribers 
of MSS. The library, collected by Vespasiano during 
fourteen years of assiduous labor, contained copies of 
all the Greek and Latin authors then discovered, the 
principal treatises on theology and church history, a 
complete series of Italian poets, historiographers, and 
commentators, various medical, mathematical, and 
legal works, essays on music, military tactics and the 
arts, together with such Hebrew books as were ac- 
cessible to copyists. Every volume was bound in 
crimson and silver, and the whole collection cost 
upwards of 30,000 ducats. For the expenses of so 
large a household, and the maintenance of this fine 
library, not to mention a palace that was being built 
and churches that required adornment, the mere 
revenues of the duchy could not have sufficed. 
Federigo owed his wealth to his engagements as a 
general. Military service formed his trade. * In 1453,' 
says Dennistoun, 'his war-pay from Alfonso of Naples 
exceeded 8,000 ducats a month, and for many years 
he had from him and his son an annual peace-pension 
of 6,000 in name of past services. At the close of his 
life, when captain -general of the Italian league, he drew 



176 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

in war i65,ooo ducats of annual stipend, 45,000 being 
his own share; in peace, 65,ooo in all/ As a Con- 
dottiere, Federigo .was famous in this age of broken 

1 faith for his plain dealing and sincerity. Only one 

piece of questionable practice — ^the capture of Veruc- 
chio in 1462 by a forged letter pretending to come 
from Sigismondo Malatesta — stained his character 
for honesty. To his soldiers in the field he was con- 
siderate and generous; to his enemies compassionate 
and merciful.^ ' In military science,' says Vespasiano. 
* he was excelled by no commander of his time; unit- 
ing energy with judgment, he conquered by prudence 
as much as by force. The like wariness was observed 
in all his affairs; and in none of his many battles was 
he worsted. Nor may I omit the strict observance 
of good faith, wherein he never failed. All to whom 
he once gave his word, might testify to his inviolate 
performance of it.' The same biographer adds that 
*he was singularly religious, and most observant of 
the Divine commands. No morning passed without 
his hearing mass upon his knees.' 

While a boy, Federigo had been educated in the 
school of Vittorino da Feltre at Mantua. Gian Fran- 
cesco Gonzaga invited that eminent scholar to his 
court in 1425 for the education of his sons and 
daughter, assembling round him subordinate teachers 
in grammar, mathematics, music, painting, dancing, 
riding, and all noble exercises. The system super - 

> See the testimony of Francesco di Giorgio; Dennistoun, vol. L 
p. 259. The sack of Volterra was. however, a blot upon his humanity 



VITTORINO DA FELTRE. 1 77 

dsed by Vittorino Included not only the acquisition 
^f scholarship, but also training in manly sports and 
the cultivation of the moral character. Many of the 
noblest Italians were his pupils. Ghiberto da Cor- 
regglo, Battista Pallavicini, Taddeo Manfredi.of Faen- 
za, Gabbriello da Cremona, Francesco da Castiglione, 
Niccolo PerrottI, together with the Count of Monte- 
feltro, lived in Vittorino s house, associating with the 
poorer students whom the benevolent philosopher 
instructed for the love of learning. Ambrogio Ca- 
maldolese In a letter to Niccolo Niccoli gives this 
animated picture of the Mantuan school: *I went 
again to visit Vittorino and to see his Greek books. 
He came to meet me with the children of the prince, 
two sons and a daughter of seven years. The eldest 
boy is eleven, the younger five. There are also 
other children of about ten, sons of nobles, as well 
as other pupils. He teaches them Greek, and they 
can write that language well. I saw a translation 
from Saint Chrysostom made by one of them which 
pleased me much.' And again a few years later: 
' He brought me Giovanni Lucido, son of the Mar- 
quis, a boy of about fourteen, whom he has educated, 
and who then recited two hundred lines composed 
by h'm upon the shows with which the Emperor 
was received in Mantua. The verses were most 
beautiful, but the sweetness and elegance of his 
recitation made them still more graceful. He also 
showed me two propositions added by him to Euclid, 
which prove how eminent he promises to be in math- 



178 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

ematical studies. There was also a little daughter 
of the Marquis, of about ten, who writes Greek 
beautifully; and many other pupils, some of noble 
birth, attended them.' The medal struck by Pisa- 
lello in honor of Vittorino da Feltre bears the ensign 
of a pelican feeding her young from a wound in her 
own breast — a symbol of the master's self-sacrifice/^ 
I hope to return in the second volume of this work 
to Vittorino. It is enough here to remark that in 
this good school the Duke of Urbino acquired that 
solid culture which distinguished him through life. 
In after years, when the cares of his numerous en- 
gagements fell thick upon him, we hear from Ves- 
pasiano that he still prosecuted his studies, reading 
Aristotle's Ethics, Politics, and Physics, listening to 
the works of S. Thomas Aquinas and Scotus read 
aloud, perusing at one time the Greek fathers and 
at another the Latin historians.^ How profitably 
he spent his day at Urbino may be gathered from 
this account of his biographer: * He was on horse- 
back at daybreak with four or six mounted attend- 
ants and not more, and with one or two foot ser- 
vants unarmed. He would ride out three or four 
miles, and be back again when the rest of his court 
rose from bed. After dismounting, he heard mass. 
Then he went into a garden open at all sides, and 

» Prendilacqua, the biographer of Vittorino, says that he died so 
poor that his funeral expenses had to be defrayed. 

« Pius II. in his Commentaries gives an interesting account of the 
conversations concerning the tactics of the ancients which he held 
with Frederick, in 1461, in the neiqjhborhood of Tivoli. 



LIFE AT URBINO. 1 79 

gave audience to those who listed until dinner-time. 
At table, all the doors were open; any man could 
enter where his lordship was; for he never ate ex- 
cept with a full hall. According to the season he 
had books read out as follows — in Lent, spiritual 
works; at other times, the history of Livy; all in 
Latin. His food was plain; he took no comfits, and 
drank no wine, except drinks of pomegranate, cherry, 
or apples.' After dinner he heard causes, and gave 
sentence in the Latin tongue. Then he would visit 
the nuns of Santa Chiara or watch the young men 
of Urbino at their games, using the courtesy of 
perfect freedom with his subjects. His reputation 
as a patron of the arts and of learning was widely 
spread. * To hear him converse with a sculptor,' 
says Vespasiano, 'you would' have thought he was 
a master of the craft. In painting, too, he displayed 
the most acute judgment; and as he could not find 
among the Italians worthy masters of oil colors, he 
sent to Flanders for one, who painted for him the 
philosophers and poets and doctors of the Church. 
He also brought from Flanders masters in the art 
of tapestry.' Pontano, Ficino, and Ppggio dedicated 
works of importance to his name; and Pirro Per- 
rctti, in the preface to his uncle's * Cornucopia,' draws 
a quaint picture of the reception which so learned a 
book was sure to meet with at Urbino.^ But Fred- 



» The preface to the original edition of the 'Cornucopia* is worth 
reading for the lively impression which it conveys of Federigo's per- 
ronality: 'Admirabitur in te divinam illam corporis proceritatcm. 



i8o RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

erick was not merely an accomplished prince. Con- 
current testimony proves that he remained a good 
husband and a constant friend throughout his life, 
that he controlled his natural quickness of temper, 
and subdued the sensual appetites which in that age 
of lax morality he might have indulged without re- 
proach. In his relations to his subjects he showed 
what a paternal monarch should be, conversing fa- 
miliarly with the citizens of Urbino, accosting them 
with head uncovered, inquiring into the necessities 
of the poorer artisans, relieving the destitute, dower- 
ing orphan girls, and helping distressed shopkeepers 
with loans. Numerous anecdotes are told which illus- 
trate his consideration for his old servants, and his 
anxiety for the welfare and good order of his state. 
At a time when the Pope and the King of Naples 
were making money by monopolies of corn, the 
Duke of Urbino filled his granaries from Apulia, 
and sold bread during a year of scarcity at a cheap 
rate to his poor subjects. Nor would he allow his 
officers to prosecute the indigent for debts incurred 
by such purchases. He used to say: * I am not 
a merchant; it is enough to have saved my people 
from hunger.* We must remember that this ex- 
cellent prince had a direct interest in maintaining 



membrorum robur eximium, venerandam oris dignitatem, aetatis 
maturam gravitatem, divinam quandam majestatem cum humani- 
tate conjunctam, totum praeterea talem qualem esse oportebat eum 
pnncipem quem nuper pontifex maximus et universus senatus om- 
nium rerum s"arum et totius ecclesiastici imperii ducem moderator- 
emque constituit.' 



A GOOD COURT. l8l 

the prosperity and good-will of his duchy. His pro- 
fession was warfare, and the district of Urbino sup- 
plied him with his best troops. Yet this should not 
diminish the respect due to the foresight and be- 
nevolence of a Condottiere who knew how to carry 
on his calling with humanity and generosity. Fed- 
erigo wore the Order of the Garter, which Henry 
VII. conferred on him, the Neapolitan Order of the 
Ermine, and the Papal decorations of the Rose, the 
Hat, the Sword. He served three pontiffs, two 
kings of Naples, and two dukes of Milan. The 
Republic of Florence and more than one Italian 
League appointed him their general in the field. 
If his military career was less brilliant than that 
of the two Sforzas, Piccinino, or Carmagnuola, 
he avoided the crimes to which ambition led 
some of these men and the rocks on which they 
struck. At his death he transmitted a flourishing 
duchy, a cultivated court, a renowned name, and 
the leadership of the Italian League to his son 
Guidobaldo. 

The young Duke, whose court, described by Cas- 
tiglione, may be said to have set the model of good 
breeding to all Europe, began life under the happiest 
auspices. From his tutor Odasio of Padua we hear 
that even in boyhood he cared only for study and for 
manly sports. His memory was so retentive that he 
could repeat whole treatises by heart after the lapse 
of ten or fifteen years, nor did he ever forget what 
he had resolved to retain. In the Latin and Greek 



1 82 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

languages he became an accomplished scholar,^ and 
while he appreciated the poets, he showed peculiar 
aptitude for philosophy and history. But his devel- 
opment was precocious. His zeal for learning and 
the excessive ardor with which he devoted himself 
to physical exercises undermined his constitution. 
He became an invalid and died childless, after ex- 
hibiting to his court for many years an example of 
patience in sickness and of dignified cheerfulness 
under the restraints of enforced inaction. His wife, 
Elizabetta Gonzaga, one of the most famous women 
of her age, was no less a pattern of noble conduct 
and serene contentment. 

Such were the two last princes of the Montefeltro 
dynasty.^ It is necessary to bear their virtues in mind 
while dwelling on the characteristics of Italian despot- 
ism in the fifteenth century. The Duchy of Urbino, 
both as an established dynasty not founded upon vio- 
lence, and also as a center of really humane culture, 
formed, it is true, an exception to the rule of Italian 
tyrannies : yet, if we omitted this state from our cal- 
culation, confining our attention to the extravagant 

* It is not easy to say what a panegyrist ot that period intended 
by ' a complete knowledge of Greek,' or ' fluent Greek writing,' in a 
prince. I suspect, however, that we ought not to understand by 
these phrases anything like a real familiarity with Greek literature, 
but rather such superficial knowledge as would enable a reader of 
Latin books to understand allusions and quotations. Poliziano, it 
may be remarked, thought it worth while to flatter Guidobaldo in a 
Greek epigram. 

» After Guidobaldo's death the duchy was continued by the Delia 
Rovere family, one of whom, Giovanni, Prefect of Rome and nephew 
of Sixtus IV., married the Duke's sister Giovanna in 1474. 



CASTIGLIONE'S COURTIER. 183 

iniquities of the Borgia family, or to the eccentricities 
of the Visconti, or to the dark crimes of the court 
of Naples, we should gain a false notion of the many- 
sided character of Italy, in which at that time vices 
and virtues were so strangely blended. We must 
never forget that the same society which produced 
a Filippo Maria Visconti, a Galcazzo Maria Sforza, a 
Sigismondo Malatesta, a Ferdinand of Aragon, gave 
birth also to a Lorenzo de' Medici and a Federigo da 
Montefeltro. It is only by studying the lives of all 
these men in combination that we can obtain a cor- 
rect conception of the manifold personality, the min- 
gled polish and barbarism, of the Italian Renaissance 
Some more detailed account of Baldassare Castig- 
lione's treatise II Cortegiano will form a fitting con 
elusion to this Chapter on the Despots. It is true 
that his book was written later than the period we 
have been considering,^ and he describes court life in 
its most graceful aspect. Yet all the antecedent his- 



» It was written in 1514, and first published in folio by the Aldi 
ot Venice in 1528. We find an English translation so early as 1561 
by Thomas Hoby. At this time it was in the hands of all the gen- 
tlefolk of Europe. It is interesting to compare the ' Cortegiano ' with 
Delia Casa's • Galateo,' published in 1558. The • Galateo ' professes 
to be a guide for gentlemen in social intercourse, and the minute 
rules laid down would satisfy the most exacting purist of the present 
century. In manners and their ethical analysis we have certainly 
gained nothing during the last three centuries. The principle upon 
which these precepts of conduct are founded is not etiquette or fash- 
ion, but respect for the sensibilities of others. It would be difficuh 
to compose a more philosophical treatise on the lesser duties imposed 
upon us by the conditions of society — such minute matters as the 
proper way to blow the nose or use the napkin, being referred to the 
one rule of acting so as to cause no inconvenience to our neighbors. 



1 84 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

tory of the past two centuries had been gradually 
producing the conditions under which his courtier 
flourished; and the Italian of the Renaissance, as he 
appeared to the rest of Europe, was such a gentle- 
man as he depicts. For the historian his book is of 
equal value in its own department with the Principe 
of Machiavelli, the Autobiography of Benvenuto Cel- 
lini, and the Diary of Burchard. 

In the opening of his ' Cortegiano ' Castiglione in- 
troduces us to the court of Urbino — refined, chival- 
rous, witty, cultivated, gentle — confessedly the purest 
and most elevated court in Italy. He brings togeth- 
er the Duchess Elizabetta Gonzaga; Emilia Pia, wife 
of Antonio da Montefeltro, whose wit is as keen and 
active as that of Shakespeare's Beatrice; Pietro Bembo, 
the Ciceronian dictator of letters in the sixteenth cen- 
tury; Bernardo Bibbiena, Berni's patron, the author 
of * Calandra,' whose portrait by Raphael in the Pitti 
enables us to estimate his innate love of humor; 
Giuliano de' Medici, Duke of Nemours, of whom the 
marble effigy by Michael Angelo still guards the 
tomb in San Lorenzo; together with other knights 
and gentlemen less known to fame — two Genoese 
Fregosi, Gasparo Pallavicini, Lodovico, Count of 
Canossa, Cesare Gonzaga, 1' Unico Aretino, and Fra 
Serafino the humorist. These ladies and gentlemen 
hold discourse together, as was the custom of Urbino, 
in the drawing-room of the duchess during four con- 
secutive evenings. The theme of their conversation 
is the Perfect Courtier. What must that man be who 



ITALIAN COURTS. 185 

deserves the name of Corteglano, and how must he 
conduct himself? The subject of discussion carries 
us at once into a bygone age. No one asks now 
what makes the perfect courtier; but in Italy of the 
Renaissance, owing to the changes from republican 
to despotic forms of government which we have 
traced in the foregoing pages, the question was one 
of the most serious importance. Culture and good 
breeding, the amenities of intercourse, the pleasures 
of the intellect, scarcely existed outside the sphere of 
courts; for one effect of the Revival of Learning had 
been to make the acquisition of polite knowledge dif- 
ficult, and the proletariat was less cultivated then than 
in the age of Dante. Men of ambition who desired 
to acquire a reputation whether as soldiers or as 
poets, as politicians or as orators, came to court and 
served their chosen prince In war or at the council- 
table, or even in humbler offices of state. To be 
able, therefore, to conduct himself with dignity, to 
know how to win the favor of his master and to se- 
cure the good- will of his peers, to retain his personal 
honor and to make himself respected v/Ithout being 
hated, to Inspire admiration and to avoid envy, to 
outshine all honorable rivals In physical exercises and 
the craft of arms, to maintain a credable equipage and 
retinue, to be Instructed in the arts of polite Inter- 
course, to converse with ease and wit, to be at home 
alike In the tllting-yard, the banquet-hall, the boudoir, 
and the council-chamber, to understand diplomacy, to 
live before the world and yet to keep a fitting pri- 



1 86 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

vacy and distance, — these and a hundred other mat 
ters were the climax and perfection of the culture of a 
gentleman. Courts being now the only centers in 
which it was possible for a man of birth and talents 
to shine, it followed that the perfect courtier and the 
perfect gentleman were synonymous terms. Castig- 
lione's treatise may therefore be called an essay on 
the character of the true gentleman as he appeared in 
Italy. Eliminating all qualities that are special to 
any art or calling, he defines those essential charac- 
teristics which were requisite for social excellence in 
the sixteenth century. It is curious to observe how 
unchangeable are the laws of real politeness and re- 
finement. Castiglione's courtier is, with one or two 
points of immaterial difference, a modern gentleman, 
such as all men of education at the present day 
would wish to be. 

The first requisite in the ideal courtier is that he 
must be noble. The Count of Canossa, who pro- 
posed the subject of debate, lays down this as an 
axiom. Caspar Pallavicino denies the necessity' 



» Italy, earlier than any other European nation, developed theo- 
retical democracy. Dante had defined true nobility to consist of per- 
sonal excellence in a man or in his ancestors; he also called ' nobiltk ' 
sister of ' filosofia.' Poggio in his ' Dialogue De Nobilitate,' into 
which he introduces Niccolo Niccoli and Lorenzo de* Medici (Cosi- 
mo's brother), decides that only merit constitutes true nobility. 
Hawking and hunting are far less noble occupations than agricul- 
ture; descent from a long line of historic criminals is no honor, 
French and English castle-life, and the robber-knighthood of Ger- 
many, he argues, are barbarous. Lorenzo pleads the authority of 
Aristotle in favor of noble blood; Poggio contests the passage quoted, 
and shows the superiority of the Latin word ' nobilitas ' (distinction 



PERSONAL QUALITIES OF COURTIER, 187 

But after a lively discussion, his opinion is overruled, 
on the ground that, although the gentle virtues may 
be found among people of obscure origin, yet a man 
who intends to be a courtier must start with the pres- 
tige of noble birth. Next he must be skillful in the 
use of weapons and courageous in the battle-field. 
He is not, however, bound to have the special science 
of a general, nor must he in times of peace profess 
unique devotion to the art of war: that would argue 
a coarseness of nature or vainglory. Again, he must 
excel in all manly sports and exercises, so as, if pos- 
sible, to beat the actual professors of each game or 
feU of skill on their own ground. Yet here also he 
should avoid mere habits of display, which are un- 



over the Greek term EvyEvBia (good birth). The several kinds of 

aristocracy in Italy are then discussed. In Naples the nobles despise 
business and idle their time away. In Rome they manage their 
estates. In Venice and Genoa they engage in commerce. In Flor- 
ence they either take to mercantile pursuits or live upon the produce 
of their land in idleness. The whole way of looking at the subject 
betrays a liberal and scientific spirit, wholly free from prejudice. 
Machiavelli (' Discorsi,' i. 55) is very severe on the aristocracy, whom 
he defines as 'those who live in idleness on the produce of their 
estates, without applying themselves to agriculture or to any other 
useful occupation.' He points out that the Venetian nobles are not 
properly so called, since they are merchants. The different districts 
of Italy had widely different conceptions of nobility. Naples was al- 
ways aristocratic, owing to its connection with France and Spain. 
Ferrara maintained the chivalry of courts. Those states, on the other 
hand, which had been democratized, like Florence, by republican 
customs, or like Milan, by despotism, set less value on birth than on 
talent and wealth. It was not until the age of the Spanish ascend- 
ency (latter half of sixteenth century) that Cosimo I. withdrew the 
yo"ng Florentines from their mercantile pursuits and enrolled them 
in his order of S. Stephen, and that the patricians of Genoa carried 
daggers inscribed 'for ih- clvi.stisement of villeins.' 



l88 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

worthy of a man who aspires to be a gentleman 
and not an athlete. Another indispensable quality Is 
gracefulness In all he does and says. In order to 
secure this elegance, he must beware of every form 
of affectation: * Let him shun affectation, as though it 
were a most perilous rock; and let him seek in every- 
thing a certain carelessness, to hide his art, and show 
that what he says or does comes from him without 
effort or deliberation.' This vice of affectation in all 
its kinds, and the ways of avoiding it, are discussed 
with a delicacy of insight which would do credit to a 
Chesterfield of the present century, sending forth his 
son Into society for the first time. Castiglione goes 
so far as to condemn the pedantry of far-fetched 
words and the coxcombry of elaborate costumes, as 
dangerous forms of affectation. His courtier must 
speak and write with force and freedom. He need 
not be a purist in his use of language, but may use 
such foreign phrases and modern idioms as are cur- 
rent in good society, aiming only at simplicity and 
clearness. He must add to excellence in arms polite 
culture In letters and sound scholarship, avoiding that 
barbarism of the French, who think it impossible to 
be a good soldier and an accomplished student at the 
same time. Yet his learning should be always held 
in reserve, to give brilliancy and flavor to his wit, 
and not brought forth for merely erudite parade. 
He must have a practical acquaintance with music 
and dancing; it would be well for him to sing and 
touch various stringed and keyed Instruments, so as 



CONDUCT OF THE COURTIER. 189 

to relax his own spirits and to make himself agree- 
able to ladies. If he can compose verses and sing 
them to his own accompaniment, so much the better. 
Finally, he ought to understand the arts of painting 
and sculpture; for criticism, even though a man be 
neither poet nor artist, is an elegant accomplishment. 
Such are the principal qualities of the Cortegiano. 
The precepts which are laid down for the use of 
his acquirements and his general conduct, resolve 
themselves into a strong recommendation of tact and 
caution. The courtier must study the nature of his 
prince, and show the greatest delicacy in approaching 
him, so as to secure his favor, and to avoid wearying 
him with importunities. In tendering his advice he 
must be modest; but he should make a point of never 
sacrificing his own liberty of judgment. To obey his 
master in dishonorable things would be a derogation 
from his dignity; and if he discovers any meanness in 
the character of the prince, It is better to quit his ser- 
vice.^ A courtier must be careful to create before- 
hand a favorable opinion of himself In places he in 
tends to visit. Much stress Is laid upon his choice of 
clothes and the equipment of his servants. In these 
respects he should aim at combining individuality 
with simplicity, so as to produce an impression of 



» From many passages in the ' Cortegiano * it is clear that Casti- 
glione is painting the character of an independent gentleman, to 
whom self-culture in all humane excellence is of far more import- 
ance than the acquisition of the art of pleasing. Circumstances 
made the life of courts the best obtaiiiable; but there is no trace of 
French * ceil-de-bcEuf ' servility. 



I^O RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

novelty without extravagance or eccentricity. He 
must be very cautious in his friendships, selecting 
his associates with care, and admitting only one or 
two to intimacy. 

In connection with the general subject of tact and 
taste, the Cardinal Bibbiena introduces an elaborate 
discussion of the different sorts of jokes, which proves 
the high value attached in Italy to all displays of wit. 
It appears that even practical jokes were not consid- 
ered in bad taste, but that irreverence and grossness 
were tabooed as boorish. Mere obscenity is espe- 
cially condemned, though it must be admitted that 
many jests approved of at that time would now ap- 
pear intolerable. But the essential point to be aimed 
at then, as now, was the promotion of mirth by clever- 
ness, and not by mere tricks and clumsy inventions. 

In bringing this chapter on Italian Despotism in 
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to a conclusion, 
it will be well to cast a backward glance over the 
ground which has been traversed. A great internal 
change took place and was accomplished during this 
period. The free burghs which flourished in the 
twelfth and thirteenth centuries, gave place to tyr- 
annies, illegal for the most part in their origin, and 
maintained by force. In the absence of dynastic 
right, violence and craft were instruments by means 
of which the despots founded and preserved their 
power. Yet the sentiments of the Italians at large 
were not unfavorable to the growth of principalities. 
On the contrary, the forces which move society, the 



CONSOLIDATION OF DESPOTISMS, I91 

inner instinct of the nation, and the laws of progress 
and development, tended year by year more surely 
to the consolidation of despotisms. City after city 
lost its faculty for self-government, until at last Flar- 
ence so long the center of political freedom, fell be- 
.eath the yoke of her merchant princes. It is diffi- 
cult for the historian not to feel either a monarchical 
or a republican bias. Yet this internal and gradual 
revolution in the states of Italy may be regarded 
neither as a matter for exultation in the cause of 
sovereignty, nor for lamentation over the decay of 
libeity. It was but part of an inevitable process 
which the Italians shared, according to the peculiar- 
ities of their condition, in common with the rest of 
Europe. 

In tracing the history of the Visconti and the 
Sfonas our attention has been naturally directed to 
the private and political vices of the despot. As a 
contrast to so much violence and treachery, we have 
studied the character of one of the best princes pro- 
ducetl in this period. Yet it must be borne in mind 
that the Duke of Urbino was far less representative 
of hiG class than Francesco Sforza, and that the aims 
and .'ictions of Gian Galeazzo Visconti formed the 
ideal to which an Italian prince of spirit, if he had the 
opp(>rtunity, aspired. The history of art and litera- 
ture in this period belongs to another branch of the 
inqi'iry; and a separate chapter must be devoted to 
th(i consideration of political morality as theorized 
by the Italians at the end of these two centuries of 



192 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

intrigue. But having insisted on the violence and 
vices of the tyrants, it seemed necessary to close 
the review of their age by describing the Italian 
nobleman as court-life nvtde him. Castiglione shows 
him at the very best: the darker shadows of the 
picture are omitted; the requirements of the most 
finished culture and the tone of the purest society 
in Italy are depicted with the elegance of a scholar 
and the taste of a true gentleman. The fact remains 
that the various influences at work in Italy during 
the age of the despots had rendered the conception 
of this ideal possible. Nowhere else in Europe could 
a portrait of so much dignity and sweetness, combin- 
ing the courage of a soldier with the learning of a 
student and the accomplishments of an artist, the 
liberality of freedom with the courtesies of service, 
have been painted from the life and been recognized 
as the model which all members of polite society 
should imitate. Nobler characters and more heroic 
virtues might have been produced by the Italian 
commonwealths if they had continued to enjoy their 
ancient freedom of self-government. Meanwhile we 
must render this justice to Italian despotism, that 
beneath its shadow was developed the type of the 
modern gentieman. 



CHAPTER IV, 

THE REPUBLICS. 

The different Physiognomies of the Italian Republics — The Similaiity 
of their Character as Municipalities — The Rights of Citizenship — 
Causes of Disturbance in the Commonwealths — Belief in the Plas- 
ticity of Constitutions — Example of Genoa — Savonarola's Consti- 
tution — Machiavelli's Discourse to Leo X. — Complexity of Inter- 
ests and Factions — Example of Siena — Small Size of Italian Cities 
— Mutual Mistrust and Jealousy of the Commonwealths — The no- 
table Exception of Venice — Constitution of Venice — Her wise Sys- 
tem of Government — Contrast of Florentine Vicissitudes — The 
Magistracies of Florence — Balia and Parlamento — The Arts of 
the Medici — Comparison of Venice and Florence in respect to In- 
tellectual Activity and Mobility — Parallels between Greece and 
Italy — Essential Differences — The Mercantile Character of Italian 
Burghs— The ' Trattato del Governo della Famiglia ' — The Bour- 
geois Tone of Florence, a^id the Ideal of a Burgher — Mercenary 
Arms. 

The despotisms of Italy present the spectacle of states 
founded upon force, controlled and molded by the 
will of princes, whose object in each case has been 
to maintain usurped power by means of mercenary 
arms and to deprive the people of political activity. 
Thus the Italian principalities, however they may 
differ in their origin, the character of their admin- 
istration, or their relation to Church and Empire, all 
tend to one type. The egotism of the despot, con- 
scious of his selfish aims and deliberate in their ex- 
ecution, formed the motive principle in all alike. 
The republics on the contrary are distinguished 



194 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

by Strongly marked characteristics. The history of 
each Is the history of the development of certain spe- 
cific qualities, whith modified the type of municipal 
organization common to them all. Their differences 
consist chiefly in the varying forms which institutions 
of a radically similar design assumed, and also in those 
peculiar local conditions which made the Venetians 
Levant merchants, the Perugians captains of adven- 
ture, the Genoese admirals and pirates, the Floren- 
tines bankers, and so forth. Each commonwealth 
contracted a certain physiognomy through the pro- 
longed action of external circumstances and by the 
maintenance of some political predilection. Thus 
Siena, excluded from maritime commerce by its sit- 
uation, remained, broadly speaking, faithful to the 
Ghibelline party; while Perugia at the distance of 
a few miles, equally debarred from mercantile ex- 
pansion, maintained the Guelf cause with pertinacity. 
The annals of the one city record a long succession 
of complicated party quarrels, throughout the course of 
which the State continued free; the Guelf leanings 
of the other exposed it to the gradual encroachment 
of the Popes, while its civic independence was im- 
periled and enfeebled by the contests of a few 
noble families. Lucca and Pistoja in like manner 
are strongly contrasted, the latter persisting in a 
state of feud and faction which delivered it bound 
hand and foot to Florence, the former after many 
vicissitudes attaining internal quiet under the domin- 
ion of a narrow oligarchy. 



TYPES OF REPUBLICS. 1 95 

But while recognizing these differences, which 
manifest themselves partly in what may be described 
as national characteristics, and partly in constitutional 
varieties, we may trace one course of historical pro- 
gression in all except Venice. This is what natural 
philosophers might call the morphology of Italian com- 
monwealths. To begin with, the Italian republics were 
all municipalities. That is, like the Greek states, they 
consisted of a small body of burghers, who alone had 
the privileges of government, together with a larger 
population, who, though they paid taxes and shared 
the commercial and social advantages of the city had 
no voice in its administration. Citizenship was her- 
editary in those families by whom it had been once 
acquired, each republic having its own criterion of the 
right, and guarding it jealously against the encroach 
ments of non-qualified persons. In Florence, for ex- 
ample, the burgher must belong to one of the Arts.^ 
In Venice his name must be inscribed upon the 
Golden Book. The rivalries to which this system of 
municipal government gave rise were a chief source 
of internal weakness to the commonwealths. Nor 
did the burghers see far enough or philosophically 
enough to recruit their numbers by a continuous ad- 
mission of new members from the wealthy but unfran- 
chised citizens.2 This alone could have saved them 

' Villari, Life of Savonarola, vol. i. p. 259, may be consulted con- 
cerning the further distinction of Benefiziati, Statuali, Aggravezzati, at 
Florence. See also Varchi, vol. i. pp. 165-70. Consult Appendix ii. 

2 It must be mentioned that a provision for admitting deserving indi- 
viduals to citizenship formed part of the Florentine Constitution of 1495. 
The principle was not, however, recognized at large by the republics. 



196 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

from the death by dwindling and decay to which they 
were exposed. The Italian conception of citizenship 
may be set forth in the words of one of their acutest 
critics, Donato Giannotti, who writes concerning the 
electors in a state :^ ' Non dico tutti gli abitanti della 
terra, ma tutti quelli che hanno grado; cioe che hanno 
acquistato, o eglino o gli antichi loro, faculta d'ot- 
tenere i magistrati; e in somma che sono participes 
iniperandi et parefidi! No Italian had any notion of 
representative government in our sense of the term. 
The problem was always how to put the administra- 
tion of the state most conveniently into the hands of 
the fittest among those who were qualified as burgh- 
ers, and how to give each burgher his due share in 
the government; not how to select men delegated 
from the whole population. The wisest among their 
philosophical politicians sought to establish a mixed 
constitution, which should combine the advantages of 
principality, aristocracy, and democracy. Starting 
with the fact that the eligible burghers numbered 
Gome 5,000, and with the assumption that among 
these the larger portion would be content with free- 
dom and a voice in the administration, while a certain 
body were ambitious of honorable distinctions, and a 
few aspired to the pomp of titular presidency, they 

» On the Government of Siena (vol. i. p. 351 of his collected works): 
' I say not all the inhabitants of the state, but all those who have rank; 
that is, who have acquired, either in their own persons or through 
their ancestors, the right of taking magistracy, in short those who 
are participes imperandi et parendi.' What has already been said 
in Chapter II. about the origin of the Italian Republics will explain 
this dehnition ot burghership. 



BURGHERSHIP, 1 97 

thought that these several desires might be satisfied 
and reconciled in a republic composed of a general 
assembly of the citizens, a select Senate, and a Doge. 
In these theories the influence of Aristotelian studies^ 
and the example of Venice are apparent. At the 
same time it is noticeable that no account whatever is 
taken of the remaining 95,000 who contributed their 
wealth and industry to the prosperity of the city.^ 
The theory of the State rests upon no abstract prin- 
ciple like that of the divine right of the Empire, which 
determined Dante's speculation in the Middle Ages, 
or that of the divine right of kings, with which we 

> It would be very interesting to trace in detail the influence of 
Aristotle's Politics upon the practical and theoretical statists of the 
Renaissance. The whole of Giannotti's works; the discourses of de' 
Pazzi, Vettori, Acciaiuoli, and the two'Guicciardini on the State ot 
Florence {Arch. St. It. vol, i.); and Machiavelli's Discorso sul Reg- 
gtmento di Firenze, addressed to Leo X., illustrate in general the 
working of Aristotelian ideas. At Florence, in 1495, Savonarola 
urged his Constitution on the burghers by appeals to Aristotle's doc- 
trine and to the example of Venice [see Segni, p. 15, and compare 
the speeches of Pagolo Antonio Soderini and Guido Antonio Ves- 
pucci, in Guicciardini's Istoria d' Italia, vol. ii. p. 155 of Rosini's 
edition, on the same occasion]. Segni, p. 86, mentions a speech of 
Pier Filippo Pandolfini, the arguments of which, he says, were drawn 
from Aristotle and illustrated by Florentine history. The Italian doc- 
trinaires seem to have imagined that, by clever manipulation of ex- 
■ isting institutions, they could construct a state similar to that called 
TCoXizeia by Aristotle, in which all sections of the community should 
be fairly represented. Venice, meanwhile, was a practical instance 
of the possible prosperity of such a constitution with a strong oli- 
garchical complexion. 

« These numbers, 100,000 for the population, and 5,000 for the 
Durghers, are stated roundly. In Florence, when the Consiglio Mag- 
giore was opened in 1495, it was found that the Florentines altogether 
numbered about 90,000, while the qualified burghers were not more 
than 3,200. In 1581 the population of Venice numbered 134,890 
whereof 1,843 were adult patricians [see below, p. 209]. 



198 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

Englishmen were made familiar in the seventeenth 
century, or that again of the rights of men, on which 
the democracies of France and America were founded. 
The right contemplated by the Italian politicians is 
that of the burghers to rule the commonwealth for 
their advantage. As a matter of fact, Venice was 
the only Italian republic which maintained this kind 
of oligarchy with success through centuries of in- 
ternal tranquillity. The rest were exposed to a 
series of revolutions which ended at last in their 
enslavement. 

Intolerant of foreign rule, and blinded by the the- 
oretical supremacy of the Empire to the need of 
looking beyond its own municipal institutions, each 
city in the twelfth century sought to introduce such a 
system into the already existing machinery of the 
burgh as should secure its independence and place 
the government in the hands of its citizens. But the 
passing of bad laws, or the non-observance of wise 
regulations, or, again, the passions of individuals and 
parties, soon disturbed the equilibrium established in 
these little communities. Desire for more power than 
their due prompted one section of the burghers to 
violence. The love of independence, or simple in- 
subordination, drove another portion to resistance. 
Matters were further complicated by resident or 
neighboring nobles. Then followed the wars of 
factions, proscriptions, and exiles. Having banished 
their rivals, the party in power for the time being 
remodeled the institutions of the republic to suit 



CIVIC INSTABIUTY, 1 99 

their own particular interest. Meanwhile the oppo- 
sition in exile fomented every element of discontent 
within the city, which this short-sighted policy was 
sure to foster. Sudden revolutions were the result, 
attended in most cases by massacres consequent 
upon the victorious return of the outlaws. To the 
action of these peccant humors — umori is the word 
applied by the elder Florentine historians to the 
troubles attendant upon factions — must be added 
the jealousy of neighboring cities, the cupidity of 
intriguing princes, the partisanship of the Guelfs and 
Ghibellines, the treason and the egotism of mer- 
cenary generals, and the false foreign policy which 
led the Italians to rely for aid on France or Germany 
or Spain. Little by little, under the prolonged ac 
tion of these disturbing forces, each republic in turn 
became weaker, more confused in policy, more mis- 
trustful of itself and its own citizens, more subdivided 
into petty but ineradicable factions, until at last It fell 
a prey either to some foreign potentate, or to the 
Church, or else to an ambitious family among its 
members. The small scale of the Italian common- 
wealths, taken singly, favored rapid change, and gave 
an undue value to distinguished wealth or unscrupu- 
lous ability among the burghers. The oscillation be- 
tween democracy and aristocracy and back again, the 
repetition of exhausting discords, and the demoral- 
izing influences of occasional despotism, so broke 
the spirit of each commonwealth that in the end the 
citizens forgot their ancient zeal for liberty, and were 



too RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

glad to accept tyranny for the sake of the protection 
it professed to extend to life and property. 

To these vicissitudes all the republics of Italy, 
with the exception of Venice, were subject. In like 
manner, they shared in common the belief that con- 
stitutions could be made at will, that the common- 
wealth was something plastic, capable of taking the 
complexion and the form impressed upon it by spec- 
ulative politicians. So firmly rooted was this convic- 
tion, and so highly self-conscious had the statesmen 
of Italy become, partly by the experience of their 
shifting history, and partly by their study of antiquity, 
that the idea of the State as something possessed of 
organic vitality can scarcely be said to have existed 
among them. The principle of gradual growth, w^iich 
gives its value, for example, to the English Constitu- 
tion, was not recognized by the Italians. Nor again 
had their past history taught them the necessity, so 
well defined and recognized by the Greek statesmen, 
of maintaining a fixed character at any cost in repub- 
lics, which, in spite of their small scale, aspired to per • 
manence.i The most violent and arbitrary changes 
which the speculative faculty of a theorist could con- 
trive, or which the prejudices of a party could impose, 
seemed to them not only possible but natural. 

A very notable instance of this tendency to treat 
the State as a plastic product of political ingenuity, is 



» The value of the tJOo? was not wholly unrecognized by polifica 
theorists. Giannotti (vol. i. p. i6o, and vol. ii. p. 13), for exarriple 
translates it by the word ' ^Tnperamento.' 



CONSTITUTION-MAKING. 20I 

afforded by the annals of Genoa. After suffering for 
centuries from the vicissitudes common to all Italian 
free cities — discords between the Guelf and Ghibcl- 
line factions, between the nobles and the people, be- 
tween the enfranchised citizens and the proletariat — 
after submitting to the rule of foreign masters, espe- 
cially of France and Milan, and after being torn in 
pieces by the rival houses of Adorni and Fregosi, 
the Genoese at last received liberty from the hands 
of Andrea Doria in i528. They then proceeded to 
form a new Constitution for the protection of their 
freedom; and in order to destroy the memory of the 
old parties which had caused their ruin, they obliter- 
ated all their family names with the exception of 
twenty, under one or other of which the whole body 
of citizens were bound to enroll themselves.^ This 
was nothing less than an attempt to create n^v^gentes 
by effacing the distinctions established by nature and 
tradition. To parallel a scheme so artificial in its 
method, we must go back to the history of Sicyon 
and the changes wrought in the Dorian tribes by 
Cleisthenes. 

Short of such violent expedients as these, the 
whole history of towns like Florence reveals a suc- 
cession of similar attempts. When, for example, the 
Medici had been expelled in 1494, the Florentines 
found themselves without a working constitution, and 
proceeded to frame one. The matter was at first re- 
ferred to two eminent jurists, Guido Antonio Ves- 

» See Varchi, St, F. lib. vii. cap. 8. 



202 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

pucci and Paolo Antonio Soderini, who argued for and 
against the establishment of a Grand Council on the 
Venetian model, before the Signory in the Palazzo. 
At this juncture Savonarola in his sermon for the 
third Sunday in Advent ^ suggested that each of the 
sixteen Companies should form a plan, that these 
should be submitted to the Gonfaloniers, who should 
choose the four best, and that from these four the 
Signory should select the most perfect. At the same 
time he pronounced himself in favor of an imitation 
of the Venetian Consiglio Grande. His scheme, as 
is well known, was adopted.^ Running through the 
whole political writings of the Florentine philosophers 
and historians, we find the same belief in artificial 
and arbitrary alterations of the state. Machiavelli pro- 
nounces his opinion that, in spite of the corruption of 
Florence, a wise legislator might effect her salvation.' 
Skill alone was needed. There lay the wax ; the sci- 
entific artist had only to set to his hand and model it. 
This is the dominant thought which pervades his 

» December 12, 1494. 

« Segni (pp. 15, 16) says that Savonarola deserved to be honored 
for this Constitution by the Florentines no less than Numa by the 
Romans. Varchi (vol. i. p. 169) judges the Consiglio Grande to have 
been the only good institution ever adopted by the Florentines. We 
may compare Giannotti {Sopra la Repubblica di Siena p. 346) for a 
similar opinion. Guicciardini, both in the Storia d' Italia and the 
Storia di Firenze, gives to Savonarola the whole credit of having 
passed this Constitution. Nardi and Pitti might be cited to the same 
effect. None of these critics doubt for a moment that what was the- 
oretically best ought to have been found practically feasible. 

« St. Fior. lib. iii. i. ' Firenze a quel grade ^ pervenuta che facil- 
mente da uno savio datordi leggi potrebbe essere in qualunque forma 
di govemo riordinata.' 



DOCTRINAIRE POLITICIANS, JOJ 

treatise on the right ordering of the State of Florence 
addressed to Leo X.^ A more consummate piece of 
political mechanism than that devised by Machiavelli 
in this essay can hardly be imagined. It is like a 
clock with separate actions for hours, minutes, sec- 
onds, and the revolutions of the moon and planets. 
All the complicated interest of parties and classes in 
the state, the traditional pre-eminence of the Medi- 
cean family, the rights of the Church, and the relation 
of Florence to foreign powers, have been carefully 
considered and provided for. The defect of this con- 
summate work of art is that it remained a mere ma- 
chine, devised to meet the exigencies of the moment, 
and powerless against such perturbations as the char- 
acters and passions of living men must introduce into 
the working of a Commonwealth. Had Florence 
been a colony established in a new country with no 
neighbors but savages, or had it been an institution 
protected from without against the cupidity of selfish 



> 'The language ot this treatise is noteworthy. After discoursing 
on the differences between republics and principalities, and showing 
that Florence is more suited to the former, and Milan to the litter, 
form of government, he says: ' Ma perch^/^air^ principato dove star- 

ebbe bene repubblica,* etc 'si perch^ Firenze e subietto at- 

tissimo di pigliare questa forma,' etc. The phrases in italics show 
how thoroughly Machiavelli regarded the commonwealth as plastic. 
We may compare the whole of Guicciardini's elaborate essay 'Del 
Reggimento di Firenze* {^Op. Ined. vol. ii.), as well as the 'Dis- 
courses ' addressed by Alessandro de' '?^tl\, Francesco Vettori, Ru- 
berto Acciaiuoli, Francesco Guicciardini, and Luigi Guicciardini, to 
the Cardinal Giulio de' Medici, on the settlement of the Florentine 
Constitution in 1522 {Arch. Stor. vol. i.). Not one of these men 
doubted that his nostrum would effect the cure of the republic un- 
ermined by slow consumption. 



904 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

rivals, then such a constitution might have been im 
posed on it with profit. But to expect that a city 
dominated by ancient prejudices, connected by a 
thousand subtle ties not only with the rest of Italy 
but also with the states of Europe, and rotten to the 
core in many of its most important members, could 
be restored to pristine vigor by a doctrinaire how- 
ever able, was chimerical. The course of events 
contradicted this vain expectation. Meanwhile a few 
clear-headed and positive observers were dimly con- 
scious of the instability of merely speculative consti- 
tution-making. Varchi, in a weighty passage on the 
defects of the Florentine republic, points out that its 
weakness arose partly from the violence of factions, 
but also in a great measure from the implicit faith re- 
posed in doctors of the law.^ The history of the 
Florentine Constitution, he says, is the history of 
changes effected by successions of mutually hostile 
parties, each in its own interest subverting the work 
of its predecessor, and each in turn relying on the 
theories of jurists, who without practical genius for 
politics make arbitrary rules for the control of state- 
affairs. Yet even Varchi shares the prevailing con- 
viction that the proper method is first to excogitate a 
perfect political system, and then to impress that like 
a stamp upon the material of the commonwealth. 
His criticism is directed against lawyers, not against 
philosophers and practical diplomatists. 

In this sense and to this extent were the republics 

» St Fior. lib. vi. cap. 4; vol. i. p. 294. 



ITALY AND GREECE, 105 

of Italy the products of constructive skill; and great 
was the political sagacity educed among the Italians 
by this state of things. The citizens reflected on the 
past, compared their institutions with those of neigh 
boring states, studied antiquity, and applied the who 
of their intelligence to the one aim of giving a certa\ 
defined form to the commonwealth. Prejudice and 
passion distorted their schemes, and each successive 
modification ot the government was apt to have a 
merely temporary object. Thus the republics, as I 
have already hinted, lacked that safeguard which the 
Greek states gained by clinging each to its own char- 
acter. The Greeks were no less self-conscious in 
their political practice and philosophy; but after the 
age of the Nomothet^, when they had experienced 
nearly every phase through which a commonwealth 
can pass, they recognized the importance of maintain- 
ing the traditional character of their constitutions in- 
violate. Sparta adhered with singular tenacity to the 
code of Lycurgus; and the Athenians, while they ad- 
vanced from step to step in the development of a 
democracy, were bent on realizing the ideal they had 
set before them. 

Religion, which in Greece, owing to its local and 
genealogical character, was favorable to this stability, 
proved in Italy one of the most potent causes of dis- 
order. The Greek city grew up under the protec- 
tion of a local deity, whose blood had been trans- 
mitted in many instances to the chief families of the 
burgh. This ancestral god gave independence and 



406 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

autonomy to the State; and when the Nomothetes 
appeared, he was understood to have interpreted 
and formulated the ' inherent law that animated the 
body politic. Thus the commonwealth was a divinely 
founded and divinely directed organism, self-sufficing, 
with no dependence upon foreign sanction, with no 
question of its right. The Italian cities, on the con- 
trary, derived their law from the common jus of the 
Imperial system, their religion from the common font 
of Christianity. They could not forget their origin, 
wrung with difficulty from existing institutions which 
preceded them and which still remained ascendant 
in the wt^rld of civilized humanity. The self-reliant 
autonom}* of a Greek state, owing allegiance only 
to its protective deity and its inherent Nomos, had 
no parallel in Italy outside Venice. All the other 
republics w^re conscious of dependence on exter- 
nal power, and regarded themselves as ab initio 
artificial rather than natural creations. 

Long before a true constitutional complexion had 
been given to any Italian State but Venice, parties 
had sprung up, and taken such firm root that the 
subsequent history of the republics was the record 
of their factions. To this point I have already al- 
luded; but it is too important to be passed by with- 
out further illustration. The great division of Guelf 
and Ghibelline introduced a vital discord into each 
section of the people, by establishing two antago- 
nistic theories respecting the right of supreme gov- 
ernment. Then followed subordinate quarrels of 



SIENA. 207 

the nobles with the townsfolk, schisms between the 
wealthier and poorer burghers, jealousies of the arti- 
sans and merchants, and factions for one or other 
eminent family. These different elements of discord 
succeed each other with astonishing rapidity; and 
as each gives place to another, it leaves a portion 
of its mischief rankling in the body politic, until at 
last there remains no possibility of self-government.^ 
The history of Florence, or Genoa, or Pistoja would 
supply us with ample illustrations of each of these 
obstacles to the formation of a solid political tempera- 
ment. But Siena furnishes perhaps the best example 
of the extent to which such feuds could disturb a 
state. The way in which this city conducted its 
government for a long course of years, justified 
Varchi in calling it * a jumble, so to speak, and 
chaos of republics, rather than a well-ordered and 
disciplined commonwealth.' ^ The discords of Siena 
were wholly internal. They proceeded from the 
wrangling of five successive factions, or Monti, as 
the people of Siena called them. The first of these 
was termed the Monte de Nobili; for Siena, like 
all Italian free burghs, had originally been controlled 
by certain noble families, who formed the people 
and excluded the other citizens from ofifices of state. 



> Machiavelli, in spite of his love ol freedom, says {St, Ftor, lib. 
vii. i): ' Coloro che sperano che una repubblica possa essere unita,, 
assai di questa speranza s'ingannano.' 

2 Vol. i. pp. 324-30. See, too, Segni, p. 213, and Giannotti, vol. 
i. p. 341. De Comines describes Siena thus: ' La ville est de tout 
temps en partiality, et se g^ouverne plus follement que ville d'ltalic' 



2oS RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

In course of time the plebeians acquired wealth, 
and the nobles split into parties among themselves. 
To such a pitch were the quarrels of these nobles 
carried, that at last they found it impossible to con- 
duct the government, and agreed to relinquish it 
for a season to nine plebeian families chosen from 
among the richest and most influential. This gave 
rise to the Monte de Nove, who were supposed to 
hold the city in commission for the nobles, while 
the latter devoted themselves to the prosecution of 
their private animosities. Weakened by feuds, the 
patricians fell a prey to their own creatures, the 
Monte de Nove, who in their turn ruled Siena like 
oligarchs, refusing to give up the power which had 
been intrusted to them. In time, however, their 
insolence became insufferable. The populace re- 
belled, deposed the Nove, and invested with su- 
preme authority twelve other families of mixed 
origin. The Monte de Dodici, created after this 
fashion, ran nearly the same course as their pre- 
decessors, except that they appear to have admin- 
istered the city equitably. Getting tired of this form 
of government, the people next superseded them by 
sixteen men, chosen from the dregs of the plebeians, 
who assumed the title of Riformatort, This new 
Monte de Sedici or de Riformatort showed much in- 
tegrity in their management of affairs, but, as is 
the wont of red republicans, they were not averse 
to bloodshed. Their cruelty caused the people, with 
the help of the surviving patrician houses, together 



SIZE OF CITIES. 209 

with the Nove and the Dodici, to rise and shake 
them off. The last governing body formed in this 
diabolical five-part fugue of crazy statecraft received 
the name of Monte del Popolo, because it included 
all who were then eligible to the Great Council 
of the State. Yet the factions of the elder Monti 
still survived; and to what extent they had absorbed 
the population may be gathered from the fact that, 
on the defeat of the Riformatori, 4,5oo of the 
Sienese were exiled. It must be borne in mind 
that with the creation of each new Monte a new 
party formed itself in the city, and the traditions 
of these parties were handed down from generation 
to generation. At last, in the beginning of the six- 
teenth century, Pandolfo Petrucci, who belonged to 
the Monte de Nove, made himself in reality, if not in 
name, the master of Siena, and the Duke of Flor- 
ence, later on in the same century extended his 
dominion over the republic.^ There is something 
almost grotesque in the bare recital of these suc- 
cessive factions; yet we must remember that be- 
neath their dry names they conceal all elements 
of class and party discord. 

What rendered the growth of parties still more 
pernicious, as already mentioned, was the smallness of 
Italian republics. Varchi reckoned 10,000 fuockt m 
Florence, 5o,ooo bocche of seculars, and 20,000 boccke 
of religious. According to Zuccagni Orlandini there 

> Siena capitulated, in 1555, to the Spanish troops, who resigned 
It to Duke Cosmo I. in 1557. 



no RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

were 90,000 Florentines in 1495, of whom only 3,200 
were burghers. Venice, according to Giannotti, count- 
ed at about the same period 20,000 fuochiy each of 
which supplied the state with two men fit to bear 
arms. These calculations, though obviously rough 
and based upon no accurate returns, show that a re- 
public of 100,000 souls, of whom 5, 000 should be citi- 
zens, would have taken distinguished rank among 
Italian cities.^ In a state of this size, divided by feuds 
of every kind, from the highest political antagonism 
down to the meanest personal antipathy, changes were 
very easily effected. The slightest disturbance of the 
equilibrium in any quarter made itself felt throughout 
the city.2 The opinions of each burgher were known 
and calculated. Individuals, by their wealth, their 
power of aiding or of suppressing poorer citizens, and 
the force of their personal ability, acquired a perilous 
importance. At Florence the political balance was 
so nicely adjusted that the ringing of the great bell in 



» It may be worth while to compare the accurate return of the 
Venetian population in 1581 furnished by Yriarte (Vie d'un Patricien 
de Venise, p. 96). The whole number of the inhabitants was I34,6c». 
Of these 1,843 were adult patricians; 4,309 women and children ol 
the patrician class; Cittadini of all ages and both sexes, 3,553; monks, 
nuns, and priests, 3,969; Jews, 1,043; beggars, 187. 

2 We might mention, as famous instances, the Neri and Bianchi 
factions introduced into Pistoja m 1296 by a quarrel of the Cancellieri 
family, the dismemberment of Florence in 121 5 by a feud between 
the Buondelmonti and Amidei, the tragedy of Imelda Lambertazzi, 
which upset Bologna in 1273, the student riot which nearly delivered 
Bologna into the hands of Rom^o de* I'epoli in 1321, the whole action 
of the Strozzi family at the period of the extinction of Florentine lib- 
erty, the petty jealousies of the Cerchi and Donati detailed by Dino 
Compagni, in 1294. 



RIVALRY OF STATES. 311 

the Palazzo meant a revolution, and to raise the cry 
of Palle in the streets was tantamount to an outbreak 
in the Medicean interest. To call aloud Popolo e liberty 
was nothing less than riot punishable by law. Segni 
tells how Jacopino Alamanni, having used these words 
near the statue of David on the Piazza in a personal 
quarrel, was beheaded for it the same day.^ The se- 
cession of three or four families from one faction to 
another altered the political situation of a whole re- 
public, and led perhaps to the exile of a sixth part of 
the enfranchised population.^ After this would follow 
the intrigues of the outlaws eager to return, including 
negotiations with lukewarm party-leaders in the city, 
alliances with hostile states, and contracts which com- 
promised the future conduct of the commonwealth in 
the interest of a few revengeful citizens. The biogra 
phies of such men as Cosimo de' Medici the elder and 
Filippo Strozzi throw the strongest light upon these 
delicacies and complexities of party politics in Florence. 
In addition to the evils of internal factions we must 
reckon all the sources of mutual mistrust to which the 
republics were exposed. As the Italians had no notion 
of representative government, so they never conceived 
a confederation. The thirst for autonomy in each state 
was as great as of old among the cities of Greece. To 
be independent of a sister republic, though such free- 

> Segni, St. Fior. p. 53. 

« As an instance, take what Marco Foscari reported in 1527 to 
the Venetian Senate respecting the parties in Florence {Rel. Ven. 
serie ii. vol. i. p. 70). The Compagnacci, one of the three great 
parties, only numbered 800 persons. 



SI 3 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

dom were bought at the price of the tyranny of a native 
family, was the first object of every commonwealth. 
At the same time this passion for independence was 
only equaled by the greed of foreign usurpation. The 
second object of each republic was to extend its power 
at the expense of its neighbors. As Pisa swallowed 
Amalfi, so Genoa destroyed Pisa, and Venice did her 
best to cripple Genoa. Florence obliterated the .rival 
burgh of Semifonte, and Milan twice reduced Piacenza 
to a wilderness. The notion that the great maritime 
powers of Italy or the leading cities of Lombardy 
should permanently co-operate for a common purpose 
was never for a moment entertained. Such leagues as 
were formed were understood to be temporary. When 
their immediate object had been gained, the members 
returned to their old local rivalries. Milan, when, on 
the occasion of Filippo Maria Visconti's death, she had 
a chance of freedom, refused to recognize the liberties 
of the Lombard cities, and fell a prey to Francesco 
Sforza. Florence, under the pernicious policy of 
Cosimo de' Medici, helped to enslave Milan and Bo- 
logna instead of entering into a republican league 
against their common foes, the tyrants. Pisa, Arezzo, 
and the other subject cities of Tuscany were treated by 
her with such selfish harshness that they proved her 
chiefest peril in the hour of need.^ Competition in 
commerce increased the mutual hatred of the free 
burghs. States like Venice, Florence, Pisa, Genoa, 

» See the instructions furnished to Averardo dei Medici, quoted by 
Von Reumont in his Life of Lorenzo, vol. ii. p. 122, German edition. 



DISUNION. 213 

depending for their existence upon mercantile wealth 
and governed by men of business, took every oppor- 
tunity they could of ruining a rival in the market. So 
mean and narrow was the spirit of Italian policy that 
no one accounted it unpatriotic or dishonorable for 
Florence to suck the very life out of Pisa, or for Venice 
tc strangle a competitor so dangerous as Genoa. 

Thus the jealousy of state against state, of party 
against party, and of family against family, held Italy 
in perpetual disunion; while diplomatic habits were 
contracted which rendered the adoption of any simple 
policy Impossible. When the time came for the Ital- 
ians to cope with the great nations of Europe, the 
republics of Venice, Genoa, Milan, Florence ought 
to have been leagued together and supported by the 
weight of the Papal authority. They might then have 
stood against the world. Instead of that, these cities 
presented nothing but mutual rancors, hostilities, and 
jealousies to the common enemy. Moreover, the 
Italians were so used to petty intrigues and to a 
system of balance of power within the peninsula, 
that they could not comprehend the magnitude of 
the impending danger. It was difficult for a poli- 
tician of the Renaissance, accustomed to the small 
theater of Italian diplomacy, schooled in the traditions 
of Lorenzo de' Medici, swayed in his calculations by 
the old pretensions of Pope and Emperor, dominated 
by the dread of Venice, Milan, and Naples, and as 
yet but dimly conscious of the true force of France 
or Spain, to conceive that absolutely the only chance 



214 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

of Italy lay in union at any cost and under any 
form. Machiavelli indeed seems too late to have 
discerned this truth. But he had been lessoned by 
events, which rendered the realization of his cher- 
ished schemes impossible ; nor could he find a Prince 
powerful enough to attempt his Utopia. Of the Re- 
publics he had abandoned all hope. 

To the laws which governed the other republics 
of Italy, Venice offered in many respects a notable 
exception. Divided from the rest of Italy by the 
lagoons, and directed by her commerce to the East- 
ern shores of the Mediterranean, Venice took no part 
in the factions which rent the rest of the peninsula, 
and had comparatively little to fear from foreign in- 
vasion. Her attitude was one of proud and almost 
scornful isolation. In the Lombard Wars of Inde- 
pendence she remained neutral, and her name does 
not appear among the Signataries to the Peace of 
Constance. Both the Papacy and the Empire recog- 
nized her independence. Her true policy consisted 
in consolidating her maritime empire and holding 
aloof from the affairs of Italy. As long as she ad- 
hered to this course, she remained the envy and 
the admiration of the rest of Europe.^ It was only 
when she sought to extend her hold upon the main- 
land that she aroused the animosity of the Italian 
powers, and had to bear the brunt of the League of 

> De Comines, in his Memoirs of the Reign of Charles VIIL 
(torn. ii. p. 69), draws a striking picture of the impression made upon 
his mind by the good government of the state of Venice. This may 
be compared with what he says of the folly of Siena. 



VENETIAN CONSTITUTION. 215 

Cambray alone.^ Her selfish prudence had been a 
source of dread long before this epoch : when she 
became aggressive, she was recognized as a common 
and intolerable enemy. 

The external security of Venice was equaled by 
her internal repose. Owing to continued freedom 
from party quarrels, the Venetians were able to pur- 
sue a consistent course of constitutional development. 
They in fact alone of the Italian cities established and 
preserved the character of their state. Having orig- 
inally founded a republic under the presidency of. 
a Doge, who combined the offices of general and 
judge, and ruled in concert with a representative 
council of the chief citizens (697-1172), the Vene- 
tians by degrees caused this form of government to 
assume a strictly oligarchical character. They began 
by limiting the authority of the Doge, who, though 
elected for life, was in 1032 forbidden to associate 



» See Mach. 1st. Fior, lib. i. ' Avendo loro con il tempo occupata 
Padoya, Vicenza, Trevigi, e dipoi Verona, Bergamo e Brescia, e nel 
Reame e in Romagna molte citt^., cacciati dalla cupidity, del dominare 
vennero in tanta opinione di potenza, che non solamente ai principi 
Italiani ma ai R6 oltramontani erano in terrore. Onde congiurati 
quelli contra di loro, in un giorno fu tolto loro quello stato che si 
avevano in molti anni con infiniti spendii guadagnato. E benche ne 
abbino in questi ultimi tempi racquistato parte, non avendo racquis- 
tata n^ la riputazione, n^ le forze, a discrezione d'altri, come tutti gli 
altri principi Italiani vivono.* It was Francesco Foscari who first to 
any important extent led the republic astray from its old policy. He 
meddled in Italian affairs, and sought to encroach upon the main- 
land. For this, and for the undue popularity he acquired thereby, 
the Council of Ten subjected him and his son Jacopo to the most 
frightfully protracted martyrdom that a relentless oligarchy has 
ever inflicted [1445-57]. 



2l6 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

his son in the supreme office of the state. In 1 172 
the election of the Doge was transferred from the 
people to the Grand Council, who, as a co-opting 
body, tended to become a close aristocracy. In 11 79 
the Ducal power was still further restricted by the 
creation of a senate called the Quarantia for the ad- 
ministration of justice; while in 1229 the Senate of 
the Pregadi, interposed between the Doge and the 
Grand Council, became an integral part of the con- 
stitution. To this latter Senate were assigned all 
deliberations upon peace and war, the voting of sup- 
plies, the confirmation of laws. Both the Quarantia 
and the Pregadi were elected by the Consiglio Grande, 
which by this time had become the virtual sovereign 
of the State of Venice. It is not necessary here to 
mention the further checks imposed upon the power 
of the Doges by the institution of officials named 
Correttori and Inquisitori, whose special business it 
was to see that the coronation oaths were duly ob- 
served, or by the regulations which prevented the 
supreme magistrate from taking any important action 
except in concert with carefully selected colleagues. 
Enough has been said to show that the constitution 
of Venice was a pyramid resting upon the basis of 
the Grand Council and rising to an ornamented apex, 
through the Senate, and the College, in the Doge. 
But in adopting this old simile — originally the happy 
thought of Donato Giannotti, it is said^ — we must not 

» Vol. ii. of his works, p. 27- On p. 29 he describes the popula- 
tion of Venice as divid*^d into ' Popolari,' or plebeians, exercising 



THE GRAND COUNCIL. tl'J 

forget that the vital force of the Grand Council was 
^elt throughout the whole of this elaborate system, 
and that the same individuals were constantly appear- 
ing In different capacities. It is this which makes the 
great event of the years 1 297-1319 so all-important 
for the future destinies of Venice. At this period the 
Grand Council was restricted to a certain number of 
noble families who had henceforth the hereditary right 
to belong to It. Every descendant of a member of 
the Grand Council could take his seat there at the 
age of twenty-five; and no new families, except upon 
the most extraordinary occasions, were admitted to 
this privilege.^ By the Closing of the Grand Council, 
as the ordinances of this crisis were termed, the ad- 
ministration of Venice was vested for perpetuity in the 
hands of a few great houses. The final completion 
was given to the oligarchy In 131 1 by the estab- 

small industries, and so forth: 'Cittadini,* or the middle class, born 
in the state, and of more importance than the plebeians; 'Gentiluo- 
mini,' or masters of Venice by sea and land, about 3,000 in number, 
corresponding to the burghers of Florence. What he says about the 
Constitution refers solely to this upper class. The elaborate work 
of M. Yriarte, La Vie d'un Patricien de Venise au Seizieme Steele, 
Paris, 1874, contains a complete analysis of the Venetian state-ma- 
chine. See in particular what he says about the helplessness of the 
Doges, ch. xiii. ' Rex in foro, senator in curia, captivus in aula,' was 
a current phrase which expressed the contrast between their dignity 
of parade and real servitude. They had no personal freedom, and 
were always ruined by office. It was necessary to pass a law com- 
pelling the Doge elect to accept the onerous distinction thrust upon 
him. The Venetian oligarchs argued that it was good that one man 
should die for the people. 

> See Giannotti, vol. ii. p. 55, for the mention of fifteen, admitted 
on the occasion of Baiamonte Tiepolo's conspiracy, and of thirty en- 
nobled during the Genoese war. 



2l8 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

lishment of the celebrated Council of Ten,^ who ex- 
ercised a supervision over all the magistracies, con- 
stituted the Supreme Court of judicature, and ended 
by controlling the whole foreign and internal policy 
of Venice. The changes which I have thus briefly 
indicated are not to be regarded as violent altera- 
tions in the constitution, but rather as successive steps 
in its development. Even the Council of Ten, which 
seems at first sight the most tyrannous state-engine 
ever devised for the enslavement of a nation, was 
in reality a natural climax to the evolution which 
had been consistently advancing since the year 1172. 
Created originally during the troublous times which 
succeeded the closing of the Grand Council, for the 
express purpose of curbing unruly nobles and pre- 
venting the emergence of conspirators like Tiepolo, 
the Council of Ten were specially designed to act 
as a check upon the several orders in the state and 
to preserve its oligarchical character inviolate. They 
were elected by the Consiglio Grande, and at the 
expiration of their office were liable to render strict 
account of all that they had done. Nor was this 
magistracy coveted by the Venetian nobles. On 
the contrary, so burdensome were its duties, and so 
great was the odium which from time to time the 
Ten incurred in the discharge of their functions, that 
it was not always found easy to fill up their vacan 
cies. A law had even to be passed that the Ten 

> The actual number of this Council was seventeen, for the Ten 
were associated with the Signoria, which consisted of the P ^e and 

six Counselors. 



THE TEN. 219 

had not completed their magistracy before their suc- 
cessors were appointed.^ They may therefore be re- 
garded as a select committee of the citizens, who 
voluntarily delegated dictatorial powers to thi 5 small 
body in order to maintain their own ascendency, to 
centralize the conduct of important affairs, to preserve 
secrecy in the administration of the republic, and to 
avoid the criticism to which the more public gov- 
ernment of states like Florence was exposed.^ The 
weakness of this portion of the state machinery was 
this : created with ill-defined and almost unlimited 
authority,^ designed to supersede the other public 
functionaries on occasions of great moment, and 
composed of men whose ability placed them in the 
very first rank of citizens, the Ten could scarcely 
fail, as time advanced, to become a permanently 
oppressive power — a despotism within the bosom of 
an oligarchy. Thus in the whole mechanism of the 
state of Venice we trace the action of a permanent 
aristocracy tolerating, with a view to its own su- 
prerriacy, an amount of magisterial control which in 
certain cases, like that of the two Foscari, amounted 
:o the sternest tyranny. By submitting to the Coun- 
cil of Ten the nobility of Venice secured its hold upon 
the people and preserved unity in its policy. 



' Giannotti, vol. ii. p. 123. 

» The diplomatic difficulties ot a popular government, a ' governo 
largo,' as opposed to a 'governo stretto,' are set forth with great 
acumen by Guicciardini, Op. hied. vol. ii. p. 84. Cf. vol. iii. p. 272. 

•« ' 6 la sua autoritk pan a quella del Consiglio de' Pregati e di 
utta la cittii/ says Giannotti, vol. ii. p. 120. 



»20 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

No State has ever exercised a greater spell of 
fascination over its pitlzens than Venice. Of treason 
against the Republic there was little. Against the 
decrees of the Council, arbitrary though they might 
be, no one sought to rebel. The Venetian bowed in 
silence and obeyed, knowing that all his actions were 
watched, that his government had long arms in foreign 
lands, and that to arouse revolt in a body of burghers 
so thoroughly controlled by common interests, would 
be impossible. Further security the Venetians gained 
by their mild and beneficent administration of subject 
cities, and by the prosperity in which their population 
flourished. When, during the war of the League of 
Cambray, Venice gave liberty to her towns upon the 
mainland, they voluntarily returned to her allegiance. 
At home, the inhabitants of the lagoons, w^ho had 
never seen a hostile army at their gates, and whose 
taxes were light in comparison with those of the rest 
of Italy, regarded the nobles as the authors of their 
unexampled happiness. Meanwhile, these nobles were 
merchants. Idleness was unknown in Venice. In- 
stead of excogitating new constitutions or planning 
vengeance against hereditary foes the Venetian at- 
tended to his commerce on the sea, swayed distant 
provinces, watched the interests of the state in foreign 
cities, and fought the naval battles of the republic. It 
was the custom of Venice to employ her patricians 
only on the sea as admirals, and never to intrust her 
armies to the generalship of burghers. This policy 
had undoubtedly its wisdom; for by these means the 



CONTRAST BETWEEN FLORENCE AND VENICE. 221 

nobles had no opportunity of intriguing on a large 
scale in Italian affairs, and never found the chance of 
growing dangerously powerful abroad. But it pledged 
the State to that system of paid condottieri and mer- 
cenary troops, jealously watched and scarcely ever 
trustworthy, which proved nearly as ruinous to Venice 
as it did to Florence. 

It is difficult to imagine a greater contrast than 
that which is presented by Florence to Venice. 
While Venice pursued one consistent course of grad- 
ual growth, and seemed immovable, Florence remained 
in perpetual flux, and altered as the strength of factions 
or of party-leaders varied.^ When the strife of Guelfs 
and Ghibellines, Neri, and Bianchi, had exhausted 
her in the fourteenth century, she submitted for a while 
to the indirect ascendency of the kings of Naples, who 
were recognized as Chiefs of the Guelf Party. Thence 
she passed for a few months into the hands of a des- 
pot in the person of the Duke of Athens (1342-43). 
After the confirmation of her republican liberty, fol- 
lowed a contest between the proletariat and the mid- 
dle classes (Ciompi 1378). During the fifteenth 
century she was kept continually disturbed by the 
rivalry of her great merchant families. The rule ol 
the Albizzi, who fought the Visconti and extended the 
Florentine territory by numerous conquests, was vir- 
tually the despotism of a close oligarchy. This phase 

» *Nunquam in eodem statu permanserunt,' says Marco Foscari 
(as quoted above, p. 42 of his report). The flux of*Florence struck a 
Venetian profoundly. 



222 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

of her career was terminated by the rise of the Medici, 
who guided her affairs with a show of constitutional 
equity for four generations. In 1494 this state of 
things was violently shaken. The Florentines ex- 
pelled the Medici, who had begun to throw off their 
mask and to assume the airs of sovereignty; then they 
reconstituted their Commonwealth as nearly as they 
could upon the model of Venice, and to this new form 
of government Savonarola gave a quasi-theocratic 
complexion by naming Christ the king of Florence.^ 
But the internal elements of the discord were too 
potent for the maintenance of this regime. The Medici 
were recalled; and this time Florence fell under the 
shadow of Church-rule, being controlled by Leo X. 
and Clement VIL, through the hands of prelates whom 
they made the guardians and advisers of their nephews. 
In 1 527 a final effort for liberty shed undying luster on 
the noblest of Italian cities. The sack of Rome had 
paralyzed the Pope. His family were compelled to 
quit the Medicean palace. The Grand Council was 
restored: a Gonfalonier was elected; Florence suffered 
the hardships of her memorable siege. At the end of 
her trials, menaced alike by Pope and Emperor, who 



• The Gonfalonier Capponi put up a tablet on the Public Palace, 
in 1528, to this effect: 'Jesus Christus Rex Florentini Populi S. F. 
decreto electus.' This inscription is differently given. See Varchi, 
vol. i. p. 266; Segni, p. 46. Nothing is more significant of the differ- 
ence between Venice and Florence than the political idealism implied 
in this religious consecration of the republic by statute. In my essay 
on ' Florence and the Medici ' {Sketches and Studies in Italy) 1 have 
attempted to condense the internal history of the Republic and to 
analyze the state-craft of the Medici. 



FLORENTINE VICISSITUDES, %%% 

shook hands over her prostrate corpse, betrayed by her 
general, the Infamous Malatesta BagllonI, and sold by 
her own selfish citizens, she had to submit to the here- 
ditary sovereignty of the Medici. It was in vain that 
Lorenzino of that house pretended to play Brutus and 
murdered his cousin the Duke Alessandro in 1536. 
Coslmo succeeded in the same year, and won the title 
of Grand Duke, which he transmitted to a line of semi- 
Austrian princes. 

Throughout all these vicissitudes every form and 
phase of republican government was advocated, dis- 
cussed, and put in practice by the Florentines. All the 
arts of factions, all the machinations of exiles, all the 
skill of demagogues, all the selfishness of party-leaders, 
all the learning of scholars, all the cupidity of subordi- 
nate of^clals, all the daring of conspirators, all the 
ingenuity of theorists, and all the malice of traitors, 
were brought successively or simultaneously into play 
by the burghers, who looked upon their State as some- 
thing they might mold at will. One thing at least is 
clear amid so much apparent confusion, that Florence 
was living a vehemently active and self-conscious life, 
acknowledging no principle of stability in her constitu- 
tion, but always stretching forward after that ideal 
Reggimento which was never realized.^ 

It Is worth while to consider more in detail the 

» In his ' Proemio ' to the ' Trattato del Reggimento di Firenze, 
Giiicciardini thus describes the desideratum: ' introdurre in Firenze 
un governo onesto, bene ordinate, e che veramente si potesse chia- 
mare libero, il che dalla sua prima origine insino a oggi non 6 mai 
state cittadino aicuno che abbia saputo o potuto fare.' 



S2A /RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

different magistracies by which the government of 
Florence was conducted between the years of 1 25o and 
1531, and the gradual changes in the constitution which 
prepared the way for the Medicean tyranny.^ It is 
only thus an accurate conception of the difference 
between the republican systems of Venice and of 
Florence can be gained. Before the date 1282, which 
may be fixed as the turning-point in Florentine history 
we hear of twelve Anziani, two chosen for each Sestiere 
of the city, acting in concert with a foreign Podesta, 
nd a Captain of the People charged with military 
authority. At this time no distinction was made 
between nobles and plebeians; and the town, though 
Guelf, had not enacted rigorous laws against the Ghi- 
belline families. Towards the end of the thirteenth 
century, however, important, changes were effected 
in the very elements of the commonwealth. The 
Anziani were superseded by the Priors of the Arts. 
Eight Priors, together with a new officer called the 
Gonfalonier of Justice, formed the Signoria, dwelling 
at public charge in the Palazzo and holding office only 
for two months.2 No one who had not been matric- 
ulated into one of the Arti or commercial guilds could 
henceforth bear office in the state. At the same time 
severe measures, called Ordinanze della Giustizia, were 

• I will place in an appendix (No. ii.) translations of Varchi, 
book iii. sections 20-22, and Nardi, book i. cap. 4, which give com- 
plete and clear accounts of the Florentine constitution after 1292. 

« See Machiavelli, /$•/. Fior. lib. ii. sect. 11. The number of the 
Priors was first three, then six, and finally eight. Up to 1282 the city 
had been divided into Sestieri. It was then found convenient to di- 
vir'e it into quarters, and the numbers followed this alteration. 



FLORENTINE MAGISTRACIES. 235 

passed, by which the nobles were for ever excluded 
from the government, and the Gonfalonier of Justice 
was appointed to maintain civil order by checking their 
pride and turbulence.^ These modifications of the 
constitution, effected between 1282 and 1292, gave its 
peculiar character to the Florentine republic. Hence- 
forward Florence was governed solely by merchants. 
Both Varchi and Machiavelli have recorded unfavora- 
ble opinions of the statute which reduced the republic 
of Florence to a commonwealth of shop-keepers.^ But 
when we read these criticisms, we must bear in mind 
the internecine ferocity of party-strife at this period, 
and the discords to which a city divided between a 
territorial aristocracy and a commercial bourgeoisie 
was perpetually exposed. If anything could make 
the Ordinanze della Giustizia appear rational, it would 
be a cool perusal of the Chronicle of Matarazzo, which 
sets forth the wretched state of Perugia owing to the 
feuds of its patrician houses, the Oddi and the Bagli- 
oni.3 , Peace for the republic was not, however, se- 
cured by these strong measures. The factions of the 
Neri and Bianchi opened the fourteenth century with 
battles and proscriptions; and in 1323 the constitution 
had again to be modified. At this date the Signoria 
of eight Priors with the Gonfalonier of Justice, the 

1 Machiavelli, 1st, Fior. lib. ii. sect. 13, may be consulted for the 
history of Giano della Bella and his memorable ordinance. Dino 
Compagni's Chronicle contains the account of a contemporary. 

» See Varchi, vol. i. p. 169; Mach. 1st. Fior. end of book ii. 

« Archivio Storico, vol. xvi. See also the article ' Perugia,* in my 
Sketches in Italy and Greece. 



226 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

College of the twelve Biionuomini, and the sixteen 
Gonfaloniers of the companies — called collectively 
i tre maggiori, or the three superior magistracies — 
were rendered eligible only to Guelf citizens of the 
iige of thirty, who had qualified in one of the seven 
Arti Maggiori, and whose names were drawn by lot. 
This mode of election, the most democratic which it is 
possible to adopt, held good through all subsequent 
changes in the state. Its immediate object was to 
quiet discontent and to remove intrigue by opening 
the magistracies to all citizens alike. But, as Nardi 
has pointed out, it weakened the sense of responsibility 
in the burghers, who, when their names were once 
included in the bags kept for the purpose, felt sure 
of their election, and had no inducement to maintain 
a high standard of integrity. Sismondi also dates from 
this epoch the withdrawal of the Florentines from 
military service.^ Nor, as the sequel shows, was the 
measure efficient as a check upon the personal ambi- 
tion of encroaching party leaders. The Squittino 
and the Borse became instruments in the hands of 
the Medici for the consolidation of their tyranny.^ 
By the end of the fourteenth century (about 1378 the 
Florentines had to meet a new difficulty. The Guelf 
citizens begfan to abuse the so-called Law of Ad- 
monition, by means of which the Ghibellines were ex- 
cluded from the government. This law had formed 
an essential part of the measures of 1323. In the 



« Vol. iii. p. 347. 

* Soe App. ii. for the phrases ' Squittino ' and ' Bona. 



ADVANCE. TO DEMOCRACY. aa; 

intervening half- century a new aristocracy, distin- 
guished by the name of nobili popolani, had grown 
up and were now threatening the republic with a close 
oligarchy.! The discords which had previously raged 
between the people and the patricians were now 
transferred to this new aristocracy and the plebeians. 
It was found necessary to abolish the Admonition, 
which had been made a pretext of excluding all novi 
homines from the government, and to place the mem- 
bers of the inferior Arti on the same footing as those 
of the superior.2 At this epoch the Medici, who 
neither belonged to the ancient aristocracy nor yet to 
the more distinguished houses of the nobili popolaiii, 
but rather to the so-called gente grass a or substantial 
tradesmen, first acquired importance. It was by a 
law of Salvestro de' Medici's in 1378 that the consti- 
tution received its final development in the direction 
of equality. Yet after all this leveling, and in spite of 
the vehement efforts made by the proletariat on the 
occasion of the Ciompi outbreak, the exclusive nature 
of the Florentine republic was maintained. The 
franchise was never extended to more than the burgh 
ers, and the matter in debate was always virtually, 
who shall be allowed to rank as citizen upon the 
register.'^ In fact, by using the pregnant words of 
Machiavelli, we may sum up the history of Florence 

> Of these new nobles the Albizzi and Ricci, deadly foes, were th«» 
most eminent. The former strove to exclude the Medici from th« 
government. 

« The number of the Arti varied at different times. Varchi treats 
of them as finally consisting of seven maggiori and foarteen minori. 



)28 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

to this point in one sentence: 'Di Firenze in prima si 
divisono intra loro i- nobili, dipoi i nobili e il popolo, 
e in ultimo il popolo e la plebe; e molte volte occorse 
che una di queste parti rimasa superiore, si divise 
in due.' ^ 

In the next generation the constitutional history 
of Florence exhibits a new phase. The equality 
which had been introduced into all classes of the 
commonwealth, combined with an absence of any 
state machinery like that of Venice, exposed Flor- 
ence at this period to the encroachments of astute 
and selfish parvenus. The Medici, who had hitherto 
been nobodies, begin now to aspire to despotism. 
Partly by his remarkable talent for intrigue, partly 
by the clever use which he made of his vast wealth, 
and partly by espousing the plebeian cause, Cosimo 
de' Medici succeeded in monopolizing the govern- 
ment. It was the policy of the Medici to create a 
party dependent for pecuniary aid upon their riches, 
and attached to their interests by the closest ties of 
personal necessity. At the same time they showed 
consummate caution in the conduct of the state, and 
expended large sums on works of public utility. 
There was nothing mean in their ambition; and 
though posterity must condemn the arts by which 
they sought to sap the foundations of freedom in 

> Proemio to Storia Fiorentina. 'In Florence the nobles first 
split up, then the nobles and the people, lastly the people and the 
multitude; and it often happened that when one of these parties got 
the upper hand, it divided into two camps.' For the meaning of 
Popolo see above, p. 55. 



MEDIC E AN DESPOTISM, 229 

their native city, we are forced to acknowledge that 
they shared the noblest enthusiasms of their brilliant 
era. Little by little they advanced so far in the en- 
slavement of Florence that the elections of all the 
magistrates, though still conducted by lot, were de- 
termined at their choice: the names of none but men 
devoted to their interests were admitted to the bags 
from which the candidates for office were selected, 
while proscriptive measures of various degrees of 
rigor excluded their enemies from participation in 
the government.^ At length in 1480 the whole ma- 
chinery of the republic was suspended by Lorenzo 
de* Medici in favor of the Board of Seventy, whom 
he nominated, and with whom, acting like a Privy 
Council, he administered the state.^ It is clear that 
this revolution could never have been effected with- 
out a succession of coups d'etat. The instrument for 
their accomplishment lay ready to the hands of the 
Medicean party in the pernicious system of the Par- 

»,What Machiavelli says {1st. Fior, vii. i) about the arts of Cos- 
imo contains the essence of the policy by which the Medici rose. 
Compare v. 4 and vii. 4-6 for his character of Cosimo. Guicciardini 
( Op. Ined. vol. ii. p. 68) describes the use made of extraordinary tax- 
ation as a weapon of offense against his enemies, by Cosimo: ' uso le 
gravezze in luogo de' pugnali che communemente suole usare chi ha 
simili reggimenti nelle mani.' The Marchese Gino Capponi {Arch, 
Stor. vol. i. pp. 315-20) analyzes the whole Medicean policy in a cri- 
tique of great ability. 

2 Guicciardini {Op. Ined. vol. ii. pp. 35-49) exposes the principle 
and the 7nodus operandi of this Council of Seventy, by means of 
which Lorenzo controlled the election of the magistracies, diverted 
the public moneys to his own use, and made his will law in Florence. 
The councils which he superseded at this date were the Consiglio del 
Popolo and the Consiglio del Comune, about which &ee Nardi« UU L 



230 HENAISSANCE IN' TTALY, 

lamento and Balia, by means of which the people, 
assembled from time to time in the public square, 
and intimidated by the reigning faction, intrusted full 
powers to a select committee nominated in private 
by the chiefs of the great house.^ It is also clear 
that so much political roguery could not have been 
successful without an extensive demoralization of the 
upper rank of citizens. The Medici in effect bought 
and sold the honor of the public officials, lent money, 
jobbed posts of profit, and winked, at peculation, until 
they had created a sufficient body of dmes damneeSy 
men who had everything to gain by a continuance 
of their corrupt authority. The party so formed, in- 
cluding even such distinguished citizens as the Guic- 
ciardini, Baccio Valori, and Francesco Vettori, proved 
the chief obstacle to the restoration of Florentine lib- 
erty in the sixteenth century. 

» For the operation of the Parlamento and Balia, see Vr»ichi, vol. 
ii. p. 372; Segni, p. 199; Nardi, lib. vi. cap. 4. Segni sr)s: 'The 
Parlamento is a meeting of the Florentine people on the Piazza ot 
the Signory. When the Signory has taken its place to address the 
meeting, the piazza is guarded by armed men, and then the people 
are asked whether they wish to give absolute power (Balia) and au- 
thority to the citizens named, for their good. When the answer, yes, 
prompted partly by inclination and partly by compulsion, is returned, 
the Signory immediately retires into the palace. This is all that is 
meant by this parlamento, which thus gives away the full power of 
effecting a change in the state.' The description given by Marco 
Foscari, p. 44 (loc. cit. supr.) is to the same effect, but the Venetian 
exposes more clearly the despotic nature of the institution in the 
hands of the Medici. It is well known how hostile Savonarola war 
to an institution which had lent itself so easily to despotism. Thir 
couplet he inscribed on the walls of the Council Chamber, in 1495:— 
' E sappi che chi vuol parlamento 
Vuol torti dalle mani il reggimento.' 
Compare the proverb, 'Chi disse parlamento disse guastam«nto ' 



THE GRAND DUCHY, J31 

This tyranny of a commercial family, swaying the 
republic without the title and with but little of the 
pomp of princes, subsisted until the hereditary pres- 
idency of the state was conferred upon Alessandro 
de' Medici, Duke of Civita di Penna, in 1531. Cosi- 
mo his successor, obtained the rank of Grand Duke 
from Pius V. in i569, and his son received the im- 
perial sanction to the title in i575. The re-establish- 
ment at two different periods of a free commonwealth 
upon the sounder basis of the Consiglio Grande 
(i494-i5i2 and 1527-30) formed but two episodes 
in the history of this masked but tenacious despotism. 
Had Savonarola's constitution been adopted in the 
thirteenth instead of at the end of the fifteenth cen- 
tury, the stability of Florence might have been se- 
cured. But at the latter date the roots of the Me- 
dicean influence were too widely intertwined with 
private interests, the jealousies of classes and of 
factions were too inveterate, for any large and 
wholesome form of popular government to be uni- 
versally acceptable. Besides, the burghers had been 
reduced to a nerveless equality of servitude, in which 
ambition and avarice took the place of patriotism ; 
while the corruption of morals, fostered by the Medici 
for the confirmation of their own authority, was so 
widely spread as to justify Segnl, Varchi, Giannotti, 
Guicclardini, and Machiavelli in representing the Flor- 
entines as equally unable to maintain their liberty and 
to submit to control. 

The historical vicissitudes of Florence were 00 



2$2 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

less remarkable than the unity of Venice. If in 
Venice we can trace the permanent and corporate 
existence of a state superior to the individuals who 
composed it, Florence exhibits the personal activity 
and conscious effort of her citizens. Nowhere can 
the intricate relations of classes to the commonwealth 
be studied more minutely than in the annals of Flor- 
ence. In no other city have opinions had greater 
value in determining historical events ; and nowhere 
was the influence of character in men of mark more 
notable. In this agitated political atmosphere the 
wonderful Florentine intelligence, which Varchi cel- 
ebrated as the special glory of the Tuscan soil, and 
which Vasari referred to something felicitous in Tus- 
can air, was sharpened to the finest edge.^ Succes- 
sive generations of practical and theoretical statesmen 
trained the race to reason upon government, and to 
regard politics as a science. Men of letters were at 
the same time also prominent in public affairs. When, 
for instance, the exiles of 1629 sued Duke Alessan- 
dro before Charles V. at Naples, Jacopo Nardi drew 
up their pleas, and Francesco Guicciardini rebutted 
them in the interest of his master. Machiavelli 
learned his philosophy at the Courts of France and 
Germany and in the camp of Cesare Borgia. S^ -ni 
shared the anxieties of Nicolo Capponi, when the 
Gonfalonier was impeached for high treason to the 
state of Florence. This list might be extended almost 
indefinitely, with the object of proving the intimate 

» Varchi ix. 49; Vasari, xii. p. 158; Burckhardt, p. aya 



FLORENCE AND VENICE, 233 

connection which subsisted at Florence between the 
thinkers and the actors. No other European com- 
munity of modern times has ever acquired so subtle 
a sense of its own political existence, has ever rea- 
jsoned upon its past history so acutely, or has ever 
displayed so much ingenuity in attempting to control 
the future. Venice on the contrary owed but little 
to the creative genius of her citizens. In Venice 
the state was everything: the individual was almost 
nothing. We find but little reflection upon politics, 
and no speculative philosophy of history among the 
Venetians until the date of Trifone Gabrielli and 
Paruta. Their records are all positive and detailed. 
The generalizations and comparisons of the Floren- 
tines are absent; nor was it till a late date of the 
Renaissance that the Venetian history came to be 
written as a whole. It would seem as though the 
constitutional stability which formed the secret of 
the strength of Venice was also the source of com- 
parative intellectual inertness. This contrast between 
the two republics displayed itself even in their art 
Statues of Judith, the tyrannicide, and of David, the 
liberator of his country, adorned the squares and log- 
gie of Florence. The painters of Venice represented 
their commonwealth as a beautiful queen receiving 
the homage of her subjects and the world. Flor- 
ence had no mythus similar to that which made 
Venice the Bride of the Sea, and which justified 
the Doge in hailing Caterina Cornaro as daughter 
of S. Mark's (147 1). It was in the personal courage 



234 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

Hnd intelligence of individual heroes that the Floren- 
tines discovered the counterpart of their own spirit; 
whereas the Venetians personified their city as a 
whole, and paid their homage to the Genius of the 
State. 

It is not merely fanciful to compare Athens, the 
city of self-conscious political activity, variable, culti- 
vated, and ill-adapted by its very freedom for pro- 
longed stability, with Florence; Sparta, firmly based 
upon an ancient constitution, indifferent to culture, 
and solid at the cost of some rigidity, with Venice. 
As in Greece the philosophers of Athens, especially 
Plato and Aristotle, wondered at the immobility of 
Sparta and idealized her institutions; so did the theo- 
rists of Florence, Savonarola, Giannotti, Guicciardini, 
look with envy at the state machinery which secured 
repose and liberty for Venice. The parallel between 
Venice and Sparta becomes still more remarkable 
when we inquire into the causes of their decay. Just 
as the Ephors, introduced at first as a safeguard to 
the constitution, by degrees extinguished the influence 
of the royal families, superseded the senate, and exer- 
cised a tyrannous control over every department of 
the state; so the Council of Ten, dangerous because 
of its vaguely defined dictatorial functions, reduced 
Venice to a despotism.^ The gradual dwindling of 

' Aristotle terms the Spartan Ephoralty idorvpawoi. Giannotti 
(vol. ii. p. 120) compares the Ten to dictators. We might bring the 
struggles of the Spartan kings with the Ephoralty into comparison 
with the attempts of the Doges Falieri and Foscari to mnke them- 
selves the chiefs of the republic in more than name. Muiici, in hit 



ATHENS AND SPARTA. 235 

the Venetian aristocracy, and the impoverishment of 
many noble families, which rendered votes in the 
Grand Council venal, and threw the power into the 
hands of a very limited oligarchy, complete the par- 
allel.^ One of the chief sources of decay both to 
Venice and to Sparta was that shortsighted policy 
which prevented the nobles from recruiting their 
ranks by the admission of new families. The system 
again of secret justice, the espionage, and the calcu- 
lated terrorism, by means of which both the Spartan 
Ephoralty and the Venetian Council imposed their 
will upon the citizens, were stifling to the free life of 
a republic.^ Venice in the end became demoralized 
in politics and profligate in private life. Her narrow- 
ing oligarchy watched the national degeneration with 
approval, knowing that it is easier to control a vitiated 
populace than to curb a nation habituated to the 
manly virtues. 

Dorians, observes that • the Ephoralty was the moving element, the 

principle of change, in the Spartan constitution, and, in the end, the 
cause of its dissolution.' Sismondi remarks that the precautions 
which led to the creation of the Council of Ten ' d^naturaient enti^re- 
ment la constitution de I'^tat.' 

1 See what Aristotle in the Politics says about oXiyavBftODnia, 
and the unequal distribution of property. As to the property of the 
Venetian nobles, see Sanudo, Vite dei Duchi, Murat. xxii. p. 1194, 
who mentions the benevolences of the richer families to the poor. 
They built houses for aristocratic paupers to live in free of rent. 

2 A curious passage in Plutarch's Life of Cleomenes (Clough's 
Trmslation, vol. iv. p. 474) exactly applies to the Venetian state- 
craft: — 'They, the Spartans, worship Fear, not as they do supernat- 
ural powers which they dread, esteeming it hurtful, but thinking 
their polity is chiefly kept up by fear .... and therefore the Lace- 
daemonians placed the temple of Fear by the Syssitium of the Ephors, 
having raised that magistracy to almost regal authority.* 



»36 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

Bel ween Athens and Florence the parallel is not 
so close. These two republics, however, resemble 
one anothei in the freedom and variety of their insti- 
tutions. In Athens, as in Florence, there was con- 
stant change and a highly developed political con- 
sciousness. Eminent men played the same important 
part in both. In both the genius of individuals 
was even stronger than the character of the state. 
Again, as Athens displayed more of a Panhellenic 
feeling than any other Greek city, so Florence was 
invariably more alive to the interests of Italy at large 
than any other state of the peninsula. Florence, like 
Athens, was the center of culture for the nation. Like 
Athens, she gave laws to her sister towns in language 
in literature, in fine arts, poetry, philosophy, and his- 
tory. Without Florence it is not probable that Italy 
would have taken the place of proud pre-eminence 
she held so long in Europe. Florence never attained to 
the material greatness of Athens, because her power, 
relatively to the rest of Italy, was slight, her factions 
were incessant, and her connection with the Papacy 
was a perpetual source of weakness. But many of the 
causes which ruined Athens were in full operation at 
Florence. First and foremost was the petulant and 
variable temper of a democracy, so well described by 
Plato, and so ably analyzed by Machiavelli. The want 
of agreement among the versatile Florentines, fertile in 
plans but incapable of concerted action, was a chief 
source of political debility. Varchi and Segni both 
relate how, in spite of wealth, ability, and formidable 



INSTABILITY OF THE FLORENTINES, J37 

forces, the Florentine exiles under the guidance of 
Filippo Strozzi (1533-37) became the laughing-stock 
of Italy through their irresolution. The Venetian 
ambassadors agree in representing the burghers of 
Florence as timid from excess of intellectual mobility. 
And Dante, whose insight into national characteristics 
was of the keenest, has described in ever-memorable 
lines the temperament of his fickle city {Purg. vi. 
135-51). 

Much of this instability was due to the fact that 
Florentine, like Athenian, intelligence was overde- 
veloped. It passed into mere cleverness, and over- 
reached itself. Next we may note the tyranny which 
both republics exercised over cities that had once been 
free. Athens created a despotic empire instead of 
forming an Ionian Confederation. Florence reduced 
Pisa to the most miserable servitude, rendered herself 
odious to Arezzo and Volterra, and never rested from 
attempts upon the liberties of Lucca and Siena. All 
these states, which as a Tuscan federation should have 
been her strength in the hour of need, took the first 
opportunity of throwing off her yoke and helping her 
enemies. What Florence spent in recapturing Pisa, 
after the passage of Charles VIII. in 1494, is incalcu- 
lable. And no sooner was she in difficulties during 
the siege of 1329, than both Arezzo and Pisa declared 
for her foes. 

It will not do to push historical parallels too far, 
interesting as it may be to note a repetition of the 
same phenomena at distant periods and under vary- 



138 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

ing conditions of society. At the same time, to ob- 
serve fundamental points of divergence is no less 
profitable. Many of the peculiarities of Greek his- 
tory are attributable to the fact that a Greek com- 
monwealth consisted of citizens living in idleness, 
supported by their slaves, and bound to the state by 
military service and by the performance of civic duties. 
The distinctive mark of both Venice and Florence, on 
the other hand, was that their citizens were traders. 
The Venetians carried on the commerce of the 
Levant; the Florentines were manufacturers and 
bankers: the one town sent her sons forth on the 
seas to barter and exchange ; the other was full of 
speculators, calculating rates of interest and discount, 
and contracting with princes for the conduct of ex- 
pensive wars. The mercantile character of these 
Italian republics is so essential to their history that 
it will not be out of place to enlarge a little on the 
topic. We have seen that the Florentines rendered 
commerce a condition of burghership. Giannotti, 
writing the life of one of the chief patriots of the re- 
public,^ says : * Egli stette a bottega, come fanno la 
maggior parte de' nostri, cosi nobili come ignobili.' 
To quote instances in a matter so clear and obvious 
would be superfluous : else I might show how Bardi 
and Peruzzi, Strozzi, Medici, Pitti, and Pazzi, while 

> Sulle azioni del Ferruccio, vol. i. p. 44. The report of Marco 
Foscari on the state of Florence, already quoted more than once, con- 
tains a curious aristocratic comment upon the shop-life of illustrious 
Florentine citizens. See Appendix ii. Even Piero de' Medici re- 
fused a Neapolitan fief on the ground that he was a tradesman. 



AGNOLO PAND0LFIN2. 239 

they ranked with princes at the Courts of France, or 
Rome, or Naples, were money-lenders, mortgagees, 
and bill-discounters in every great city of Europe. 
The Palle of the Medici, which emboss the gorgeous 
ceilings of the Cathedral of Pisa, still swing above the 
pawnbroker's shop in London. And though great 
families like the Rothschilds in the most recent days 
have successfully asserted the aristocracy of wealth 
acquired by usury, it still remains a surprising fact 
that the daughter of the mediaeval bankers should 
have given a monarch to the French in the sixteenth 
century. 

A very lively picture of the modes of life and the 
habits of mind peculiar to the Italian burgher may be 
gained by the perusal of Agnolo Pandolfini's treatise, 
Del Governo della Faniiglia. This essay should be 
read side by side with Castiglione's Cortegiano, by 
all who wish to understand the private life of the 
Italians in the age of the Renaissance.^ Pandolfini 
lived at the time of the war of Florence with Filippo 
Visconti the exile, and the return of Cosimo de' 
Medici. He was employed by the republic on 

' I ought to state that Pandolfini is at least a century earlier in 

date than CasligUone, and that he represents a more primitive condi- 
tion of society. The facts I have mentioned about his life are given 
on the authority of Vespasiano da Bisticci. The references are made 
to the Milanese edition of 1802. It must also be added that there 
are strong reasons for assigning the treatise in question to Leo Bat- 
tista Alberti. As it professes, however, to give a picture of Pandol- 
fini's family, I have adhered to the old title. But the whole question 
of the authorship of the Famiglia will be fully discussed in the last 
section of my book, which deals with Italian literature. Personally, 
I accept the theory of Alberti's authorship. 



240 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

Important missions, and his substance was so great 
that, on occasion of extraordinary aids, his contri- 
butions stood third or fourth upon the list. In the 
Councils of the Republic he always advocated peace, 
and in particular he spoke against Impresa di Lucca. 
As age advanced, he retired from public affairs, and 
devoted himself to study, religious exercises, and 
country excursions. He possessed a beautiful villa 
at SIgna, notable for the splendor of its maintenance 
in all points which befit a gentleman. There he had 
the honor on various occasions of entertaining Pope 
Eugenius, King Rene, Francesco Sforza, and the 
Marchese Piccinino. His sons lived with him, and 
spent much of their spare time in hawking and the 
chase. They were three. Carlo, who rose to great 
dignity in the republic, Giannozzo, still more eminent 
as a public man, and Pandolfo, who died young. 
His wife, one of the Strozzi, died while Agnolo was 
between thirty and forty; but he never married 
again. He was a great friend of Lionardo Aretino, 
who published nothing without his approval. He 
lived to be upwards of eighty-five, and died in 1446. 
These facts sufficiently indicate what sort of man was 
the supposed author of the " Essay on the Family," 
proving, as they do, that he passed his leisure among 
princes and scholars, and that he played some part in 
the public affairs of the State of Florence. Yet his 
view of human life is wholly bo2irgeois, though by 
no means ignoble. In his conception, the first of all 
virtues is thrift, which should regulate the use not 



TREATISE ON THE FAMILY, 34 1 

only of money, but of all the gifts of nature and of 
fortune. The proper economy of the mind involves 
liberal studies, courteous manners, honest conduct, 
and religion.^ The right use of the body implies 
keeping it in good health by continence, exercise, 
and diet^ The thrift of time consists in being never 
idle. Agnolo's sons, who are represented as talking 
with their father in this dialogue, ask him, in relation 
to the gifts of fortune, whether he thinks the honors 
of the State desirable. This question introduces a 
long and vehement invective against the life of a 
professional statesman, as of necessity fraudulent, 
mendacious, egotistic, cruel.^ The private man of 
middle station is really happiest; and only a sense 
of patriotism should induce him, not seeking but 
when sought, to serve the State in public office. 
The really dear possessions of a man are his family, 
his wealth, his good repute, and his friendships. In 
order to be successful in the conduct of the family, a 
man must choose a large and healthy house, where 
the whole of his offspring — children and grandchil- 
dren, may live together. He must own an estate 
which will supply him with corn, wine, oil, wood, 
fowls, in fact with all the necessaries of life, so that 
he may not need to buy much. The main food of 
the family will be bread and wine. The discussion 

A beautiful description of the religious temper, p. 74. 

» What Pandolfini says about the beauty of the body is worthy of 
a Greek: what he says about exercise might have been written by an 
Englishman, p. Tj. 

3 Pp. 82-89 are very important as showing how low the art of 
politics had sunk in Italy. 



S4> RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

of the utility of the farm leads Agnolo to praise the 
pleasure and profit to be derived from life in the Villa. 
But at the same time a town-house has to be main- 
tained; and it is here that the sons of the family 
should be educated, so that they may learn caution, 
and avoid vice by knowing its ugliness. In order to 
meet expenses, some trade must be followed, silk or 
wool manufacture being preferred; and in this the 
whole family should join, the head distributing work 
of various kinds to his children, as he deems most 
fitting, and always employing them rather than 
strangers. Thus we get the three great elements 
of the Florentine citizen's life: the casa^ or town- 
house, the villa, or country-farm, and the bottega, or 
place of business. What follows is principally con- 
cerned with the details of economy. Expenses are 
of two sorts: necessary, for the repair of the house, 
the maintenance of the farm, the stocking of the 
shop; and unnecessary, for plate, house decoration, 
horses, grand clothes, entertainments. On this topic 
Agnolo inveighs with severity against household 
parasites, bravi, and dissolute dependents.^ A little 
further on he indulges in another diatribe against 
great nobles, i signoriy from whom he would have 
his sons keep clear at any cost.^ It is the animosity 
of the industrious burgher for the haughty, pleasure- 
loving, idle, careless man of blood and high estate. 
In the bourgeois household described by Pandolfini 
no one can be indolent. The men have to work 

» F. 125. • F. I7S- 



DOMESTIC RELATIONS, 143 

outside and collect wealth, the women to stay at 
home and preserve it. The character of a good 
housewife is sketched very minutely. Pandolfini 
describes how, when he was first married, he took 
his wife over the house, and gave up to her care all 
its contents. Then he went into their bedroom, and 
made her kneel with him before Madonna, and 
prayed God to give them wealth, friends, and male 
children. After that he told her that honesty would 
be her great charm in his eyes, as well as her chief 
virtue, and advised her to forego the use of paints 
and cosmetics. Much sound advice follows as to the 
respective positions of the master and the mistress 
in the household, the superintendence of domestics, 
and the right ordering of the most insignificant mat- 
ters. The quality of the dress which will beseem 
the children of an honored citizen on various occa- 
sions, the pocket money of the boys, the food of the 
common table, are all discussed with some minute- 
ness; and the wife is made to feel that she must learn 
to be neither jealous nor curious about concerns which 
her husband finds it expedient to keep private. 

The charm of a treatise like that of Pandolfini on 
the family evaporates as soon as we try to make a 
summary of its contents. Enough, however, has been 
quoted to show the thoroughly bourgeois tone which 
prevailed among the citizens of Florence in the fif- 
teenth century.i Very important results were the 

I Varchi (book x. cap. 69) quotes a Florentine proverb: • Chiunque 
non sta a bottega 6 ladro.' See above, p. 239. 



144 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

natural Issue of this commercial spirit in the State. 
Talking of the Ordinanze di Giustizia, Varchi ob- 
serves: * While they removed in part the civil dis- 
cords of Florence, they almost entirely extinguished 
all nobility of feeling in the Florentines, and tended 
as much to diminish the power and haughtiness of 
the city as to abate the insolence of the patriciate/ ^ 
A little further on he says: * Hence may all prudent 
men see how ill-ordered in all things, save only in 
the Grand Council, has been the commonwealth of 
Florence; seeing that, to speak of nought else, that 
kind of men who in a wisely constituted republic 
ought not to fulfill any magistracy whatever, the mer- 
chants and artisans of all sorts, are in Florence alone 
capable of taking office, to the exclusion of all others.' 
Machiavelli, less wordy but far more emphatic than 
Varchi, says of the same revolution: 'This caused the 
abandonment by Florence not only of arms, but of 
all nobility of soul/ ^ The most notable consequence 
of the mercantile temper of the republics was the 
ruinous system of mercenary warfare, with all its 
attendant evils of ambitious captains of adventure, 
irresponsible soldiery, and mock campaigns, adopted 
by the free Italian States. It is true that even if the 
Italians had maintained their national militias in full 
force, they might not have been able to resist the 
shock of France and Spain any better than the 
armies of Thebes, Sparta, and Athens averted the 

> Varchi, vol. i. p. i68; compare vol. ii. p. 87, however. 
• 1st. Fior. lib. ii. end. Aristotle's contempt for the ttxyttoa 
emerges in these comments of the doctrinaires. 



DISUSE OF NATIONAL ARMS 345 

Macedonian hegemony. But they would at least 
have run a better chance, and not perhaps have 
perished so ignobly through the treason of an Al- 
fonso d'Este (i527), of a Marquis of Pescara (r525), 
of a Duke of Urbino (i527), and of a Malatesta Bag- 
lioni (1530).^ Machiavelll, in a weighty passage at 
the end of the first book of his Florentine History, 
sums up the various causes which contributed to the 
disuse of national arms among the Italians of the Re- 
naissance. The fear of the despot for his subjects, 
the priest-rule of the Church, the jealousy of Venice 
for her own nobles, and the commercial sluggishness 
of the Florentine burghers, caused each and all of 
these powers, otherwise so different, to Intrust their 
armies to paid captains. * Di questi adunque oziosi 
principi e di queste vilissime armi sara plena la mia 
Istoria,' is the contemptuous phrase with which he 
winds up his analysis.^ 

» To multiply the instances of fraud and treason on the part of 
Italian condottieri would be easy. I have only mentioned the notable 
examples which fall within a critical period of five years. The Mar- 
quis of Pcscara betrayed to Charles V. the league for the liberation 
of Italy, which he had joined at Milan. The Duke of Ferrara re- 
ceived and victualed Bourbon's (then Frundsberg's) army on its way 
to sack Rome, because he spited the Pope, and wanted to seize Mo- 
dena for himself. The Duke of Urbino, wishing to punish Clem- 
ent VII. for personal injuries, omitted to relieve Rome when it was 
being plundered by the Lutherans, though he held the commission 
of the Italian League. Malatesta Baglioni sold Florence, which he 
had undertaken to defend, to the Imperial army under the Prince of 
Orange. 

2 ' With the records of these indolent princes and most abject arma- 
ments, my history will, therefore, be filled.' Compare the following 
passage in a letter from Machiavelli to Francesco Guicciardini {Op. 
vol. X. p. 255): 'Comincio ora a scrivere di nuovo, e mi sfogo accu- 
tando i principi, che hanno fatto ogni cosa per condurci qui.' 



CHAPTER V. 

THE FLORENTINE HISTORIANS. 

Florence, the City of Intelligence — Cupidity, Curiosity, and the Love 
of Beauty — Florentine Historical Literature — Philosophical Study 
of History — Ricordano Malespini — Florentine History compared 
with the Chronicles of other Italian Towns — The Villani — The 
Date 1300 — Statistics — Dante's Political Essays and Pamphlets — 
Dino Compagni — Latin Histories of Florence in Fifteenth Cen- 
tury — Lionardo Bruni and Poggio Bracciolini — The Historians 
of the First Half of the Sixteenth Century — Men of Action and 
Men of Letters: the Doctrinaires — Florence between 1494 and 
1537 — Varchi, Segni, Nardi, Pitti, Nerli, Guicciardini — The Po- 
litical Importance of these Writers — The Last Years of Floren- 
tine Independence, and the Siege of 1529 — State of Parties — Fil- 
ippo Strozzi — Different Views of Florentine Weakness taken by 
the Historians — Their Literary Qualities — Francesco Guicciardini 
and Niccolo Machiavelli — Scientific Statists — Discord between 
Life and Literature — The Biography of Guicciardini — His ' Istoria 
d'ltalia,' ' Dialogo del Reggimento di Firenze.' ' Storia Fiorentina,' 
' Ricordi ' — Biography of Machiavelli — His Scheme of a National 
Militia — Dedication of ' The Prince ' — Political Ethics of the Italian 
Renaissance — The Discorsi — The Seven Books on the Art of War 
and the ' History of Florence.' 

i'LORENCE was essentially the city of intelligence 
iii modern times. Other nations have surpassed the 
Italians in their genius — the quality which gave a 
superhuman power of insight to Shakespeare and an 
universal sympathy to Goethe. But nowhere else 
except at Athens has the whole population of a city 
been so permeated with ideas, so highly intellectual 
by nature, so keen in perception, so witty and so 



PRIMACY OF THE FLORENTINES. »47 

subtle, as at Florence. The fine and delicate spirit 
of the Italians existed in quintessence among the 
Florentines. And of this superiority not only they, 
but the inhabitants also of Rome and Lombardy and 
Naples, were conscious. Boniface VIII., when he 
received the ambassadors of the Christian powers 
in Rome on the occasion of the Jubilee in 1300, ob- 
served that all of them were citizens of Florence. 
The witticism which he is said to have uttered, / 
Fiorentini essere il quinto elemento^ * that the men 
of Florence form a fifth element,* passed into a prov 
erb. The primacy of the Florentines in literature, 
the fine arts, law, scholarship, philosophy, and sci- 
ence was acknowledged throughout Italy. 

When the struggle for existence has been success- 
fully terminated, and the mere instinct of self-preser- 
vation no longer absorbs the activities of a people, 
then the three chief motive forces of civilization be- 
gin to operate. These are cupidity, or the desire of 
wealth and all that it procures; curiosity, or the desire 
to discover new facts about the world and man; and 
the love of beauty, which is the parent of all art. 
Commerce, philosophy, science, scholarship, sculp- 
ture, architecture, painting, music, poetry, are the 
products of these ruling impulses— everything in fact 
which gives a higher value to the life of man. Dif- 
ferent nations have been swayed by these passions in 
different degrees. The artistic faculty, which owes 
its energy to the love of beauty, has been denied to 
some; the philosophic faculty, wViich starts with curi 



848 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

osity, to Others; and some again have shown but lit 
tie capacity for amassing wealth by industry or calcu 
lation. It is rare to find a whole nation possessed of 
all in an equal measure of perfection. Such, how- 
ever, were the Florentines.^ The mere sight of the 
city and her monuments would suffice to prove this. 
But we are not reduced to the necessity of divining 
what Florence was by the inspection of her churches, 
palaces, and pictures. That marvelous intelligence 
which was her pride, burned brightly in a long series 
of historians and annalists, who have handed down to 
us the biography of the city in volumes as remarka- 
ble for penetrative acumen as for definite delineation 
and dramatic interest. We possess picture-galleries 
of pages in which the great men of Florence live 
again and seem to breathe and move, epics of the 
commonwealth's vicissitudes from her earliest com- 
mencement, detailed tragedies and highly finished 
episodes, studies of separate characters, and idylls 
detached from the main current of her story. The 
whole mass of this historical literature is instinct with 
the spirit of criticism and vital with experience. The 
writers have been either actors or spectators of the"" 
drama. Trained in the study of antiquity, as well as 
in the council-chambers of the republic and in the 
courts of foreign princes, they survey the matter of 
their histories from a lofty vantage ground, fortifying 

> Since the Greeks, no people have combined curiosity and the 
love of beauty, the scientific and the artistic sense, in the s&me pro- 
portions as the Florentines. 



SCIENTIFIC HISTORY. 349 

their speculative conclusions by practical knowledge, 
and purifying their judgment of contemporary events 
with the philosophy of the past. Owing to this rare 
mixture of qualities, the Florentines deserve to be 
styled the discoverers of the historic method for the 
modern world. They first perceived that it is un- 
profitable to study the history of a state in isolation, 
that not wars and treaties only, but the internal vicis- 
situdes of the commonwealth, form the real subject 
matter of inquiry,^ and that the smallest details, bio- 
graphical, economical, or topographical, may have the 
greatest value. While the rest of Europe was ignor- 
ant of statistics, and little apt to pierce below the sur- 
face of events to the secret springs of conduct, in 
Florence a body of scientific historians had gradually 
been formed, who recognized the necessity of basing 
their investigations upon a diligent study of public 
records, state-papers, and notes of contemporary ob- 
servers.2 The same men prepared themselves for the 

1 See Machiavelli's critique of Lionardo d'Arezzo and Messer 
Poggio, in the Proemio to his Florentine History. His own concep- 
tion of history, as the attempt to delineate the very spirit of a nation, 
is highly philosophical. 

2 The high sense of the requirements of scientific history attained 
by the Italians is shown by what Giovio relates of Gian Galeazzo's 
archives {Vita di Gio. Galeazzo, p. 107). After describing these, he 
adds: ' talche, chi volesse scrivere un' historia giusta non potrebbe 
desiderare altronde n^ piu abbondante n^ piu certa materia; perci- 
occh^ da questi libri facilissimamente si traggono le cagioni delle 
guerre, i consigli, e i successi dell' imprese.* The Proemio to Var- 
chi's Storie Fiorejttine (vol. i. pp. 42-44), which gives an account 
of his preparatory labors, is an unconscious treatise on the model 
historian. Accuracy, patience, love of truth, sincerity in criticism 
and laborious research, have all their proper place assigned to them. 
Compare Guicciardini, Ricordi, No. cxliii., for sound remarks upon tht 
histortan's duty of collecting: the statistics of his own age and country. 



250 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

task of criticism by a profound study of ethical and 
political philosophy in the works of Aristotle, Plato, 
Cicero, and Tacitus.^ They examined the methods 
of classical historians, and compared the annals of 
Greece, Rome, and Palestine with the chronicles of 
their own country. They attempted to divine the 
genius and to characterize the special qualities of the 
nations, cities, and individuals of whom they had to 
treat.2 At the same time they spared no pains in 
seeking out persons possessed of accurate knowledge 
in every branch of inquiry that came beneath theii 
notice, so that their treatises have the freshness of 
original documents and the charm of personal me- 
moirs. Much, as I have elsewhere noted, was due 
to the peculiarly restless temper of the Florentines, 
speculative, variable, unquiet in their politics. The 
very qualities which exposed the commonwealth to 
revolutions, developed the intelligence of her histo- 
rians; her want of stability was the price she paid for 
intellectual versatility and acuteness unrivaled in mod 
ern times. ''' O ingenia ntagis acria quam matura!' 
said Petrarch, and with truth, about the wits of the 
Florentines; for it is their property by nature to have 



> The prefaces to Giannotti's critiques of Florence and of Venice 
iliow how thoroughly his mind had been imbued with the Politics 
of Aristotle. Varchi acknowledges the direct influence of Polybius 
and Tacitus. Livy is Machiavelli's favorite. 

« On this point the Relazioni of Italian ambassadors are invalu- 
able. What dryly philosophical compendia are the notes of Machia- 
velli upon the French Court and Cesare Borgia! How astute are 
the Venetian letters on the opinions and qualities of the Raman 
prebktesl 



THE YEAR IJOO. 25 1 

more of liveliness and acumen than of maturity or 
gravity.' * 

The year 1300 marks the first development of 
historical research in Florence. Two great writers, 
Dante Alighieri and Giovanni Villani, at this epoch 
pursued different lines of study, which determined 
the future of this branch of literature for the Italians. 
It is not uncharacteristic of Florentine genius that 
while the chief city of Tuscany was deficient in his- 
torians of her achievements before the date which I 
have mentioned, her first essays in historiography 
should have been monumental and standard- making 
for the rest of Italy. Just as the great burghs of 
Lombardy attained municipal independence some- 
what earlier than those of Tuscany, so the historic 
sense developed itself in the valley of the Po at a 
period when the valley of the Arno had no chron- 
icler. Sire Raul and Ottone Morena, the annalists 
of Milan, Fra Salimbene, the sagacious and compre- 
hensive historian of Parma, Rolandino, to whom we 
owe the chronicle of Ezzelino and the tragedy of 
the Trevisan Marches, have no rivals south of the 
Apennines in the thirteenth century. Even the 
Chronicle of the Malespini family, written in the 
vulgar tongue from the beginning of the world to 
the year 1281, which occupies 146 volumes of 
Muratori's Collection, and which used to be the 
pride of Tuscan antiquarians, has recently been 
shown to be in all probability a compilation based 

» Guicc. Ricordi, cciii. Op. Ined. vol. i. p. 22^ 



251 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

upon the Annals of Villani.^ This makes the clear 
emergence of a scientific sense for history- in the 
year 1300 at Florence all the more remarkable. In 
order to estimate the high quality of the work 
achieved by the Villani it is only necessary to turn 
the pages of some early chronicles of sister cities 
which still breathe the spirit of unintelligent mediaeval 
industry, before the method of history had been criti- 
cally apprehended. The naivete of these records 
may be appreciated by the following extracts. A 
Roman writes ^i * I Lodovico Bonconte Monaldeschi 
was born In Orvieto, and was brought up Ih the city 
of Rome, where I have resided. I was born in the 
year 1327, in the month of June, at the time when 
the Emperor Lodovico came. Now I wish to re- 
late the whole history of my age, seeing that I lived 
one hundred and fifteen years without illness, except 
that when I was born I fainted, and I died of old 
age, and remained in bed twelve months on enil 



1 See Paul Scheffer-Boichorst, Florentiner Studien, Leipzig, 1874. 
Carl Hegel, in his defense of Compagni, Die Chronik des Dino Com- 
•bagni, Versuch einer Rettung, Leipzig, 1875, admits the proof of 
spuriousness. See the preface, p. v. The point, however, is still 
disputed by Florentine scholars of high authority. Gino Capponi, in 
his Storia della Repubblica di Firenze (vol. i. Appendix, final note), 
observes that while the Villani are popular in tone the Malespini 
Chronicle is feudal. Adolfo Bartoli {Storia della Lett. It. vol. iii. p. 
155) treats the question as still open. The custom of preserving 
W\^{ fasti in the archives of great houses rendered such compila- 
tions as the Malespini Chronicle is now supposed to have been both 
easy and attractive. The Christian name Ricordano given to the 
first Malespini annalist does not exist. It has been suggested that it 
is due to a mi<^reading of an initial sentence, Ricordano i Malespini. 

* Muratori, vol. xii. p. 529. 



EARLY CHRONICLES AND VILLANL 153 

Burigozzo's Chronicle of Milan, again, concludes with 
these words : ^ 'As you will see in the Annals of my 
son, inasmuch as the death which has overtaken me 
prevents my writing more.' Chronicles conceived 
ind written in this spirit are diaries of events, re- 
pertories of strange stories, and old wives' tales, with- 
out a deep sense of personal responsibility, devoid 
alike of criticism and artistic unity. Very different 
is the character of the historical literature which starts 
into being in Florence at the opening of the four- 
teenth century. 

Giovanni Villani relates how, having visited Romti 
on the occasion of the Jubilee, when 200,000 pilgrims 
crowded the streets of the Eternal City, he was moved 
in the depth of his soul by the spectacle of the ruins 
of the discrowned mistress of the world.^ * When I 
saw the great and ancient monuments of Rome, and 
read the histories and the great deeds of the Romans, 
written by Virgil, and by Sallust, and by Lucan, and 
by Livy, and by Valerius, and Orosius, and other 
masters of history, who related small as well as great 
things of the acts and doings of the Romans, I took 
style and manner from them, though, as a learner, 
I was not worthy of so vast a work.' Like our own 
Gibbon, musing upon the steps of Ara Celi, within 

' Arch. Star. vol. iii. p. 532. Both Monaldeschi and Burigozzo 
appear to mention their own death. The probability is that their 
annals, as we have them, have been freely dealt with by transcribers 
or continuators adopting the historic 'I' after the decease of the 
titular authors. 

> Lib. viii. cap. 36. 



254 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

sight of the Capitol, and within hearing of the monks 
at prayer, he felt the genius loci stir him with a mix- 
ture of astonishment and pathos. Then ' reflecting 
that our city of Florence, the daughter and the crea- 
ture of Rome, was in the ascendant toward great 
achievements, while Rome was on the wane, I 
thought it seemly to relate in this new Chronicle 
all the doings and the origins of the town of Flor- 
ence, as far as I could collect and discover them, 
and to continue the acts of the Florentines and the 
other notable things of the world in brief onwards 
so long as it shall be God's pleasure, hoping in 
whom by His grace I have done the work rather 
than by my poor knowledge; and therefore in the 
year 1300, when I returned from Rome, I began to 
compile this book, to the reverence of God and Saint 
John and the praise of this our city Florence.' The 
key-note is struck in these passages. Admiration 
for the past mingles with prescience of the future. 
The artist and the patriot awake together in Villani 
at the sight of Rome and the thought of Florence. 
The result of this visit to Rome in 1300 was 
the Chronicle which Giovanni Villani carried in 
twelve books down to the year 1346. In 1348 
he died of the plague, and his work was continued 
on the same plan by his brother Matteo. Matteo 
in his turn died of plague in 1362, and left the 
Chronicle to his son Filippo, who brought it down 
to the year 1365. Of the three Villani, Giovanni 
is the greatest, both as a master of style and as an 



FLORENTINE STATISTICS. 255 

historical artist. Matteo is valuable for the general 
reflections which form exordia to the eleven books 
that bear his name. Filippo was more of a rhe- 
torician. He is known as the public lecturer upon 
the Divine Comedy, and as the author of some in- 
teresting but meager lives of eminent Florentines, 
his predecessors or contemporaries. 

The Chronicle of the Villani is a treasure-house 
of clear and accurate delineations rather than of pro- 
found analysis. Not only does it embrace the whole 
affairs of Europe in annals which leave little to be de- 
sired in precision of detail and brevity of statement; 
but, what is more to our present purpose, it conveys 
a lively picture of the internal condition of the Flor- 
entines and the statistics of the city in the fourteenth 
century. We learn, for example, that the ordinary 
revenues of Florence amounted to about 300,000 
golden florins,^ levied chiefly by way of taxes — 90,200 
proceeding from the octroi, 58,300 from the retail 
wine trade, 14,450 from the salt duties, and so on 
through the various imposts, each of which is care- 
fully calculated. Then we are informed concerning 
the ordinary expenditure of the Commune — 15,240 
lire for the podesta and his establishment, 5, 880 lire 
foi the Captain of the people and his train, 3,600 for 
the maintenance of the Signory in the Palazzo, and 
so on down to a sum of 2,400 for the food of the 
lions, for candles, torches, and bonfires. The amount 
spent publicly in almsgiving; the salaries of ambassa- 

» xL6«. 



356 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

dors and governors; the cost of maintaining the state 
armory; the pay of the night-watch; the money spent 
upon the yearly games when the palio was run; the 
wages of the city trumpeters; and so forth, are all ac- 
curately reckoned. In fact the ordinary Budget of 
the Commune is set forth. The rate of extraordinary 
expenses during war-time is estimated on the scale 
of sums voted by the Florentines to carry on the war 
with Martino della Scala in 1338. At that time they 
contributed 2 5,ooo florins monthly to Venice, main- 
tained full garrisons in the fortresses of the republic, 
and paid as well for upwards of 1,000 men at arms. 
In order that a correct notion of these balance-sheets 
may be obtained, Villani is careful to give particulars 
about the value of the florin and the lira, and the 
number of florins coined yearly. In describing the 
condition of Florence at this period, he computes 
the number of citizens capable of bearing arms, be- 
tween the ages fifteen and seventy, at 2 5,ooo; the 
population of the city at 90,000, not counting the 
monastic communities, nor including the strangers, 
who are estimated at about i5,ooo. The country 
districts belonging to Florence add 80,000 to this 
calculation. It is further noticed that the excess of 
male births over female was between 300 and 5oo 
yearly in Florence, that from 8,000 to 10,000 boys 
and girls learned to read; that there were six schools, 
in which from 10,000 to 12,000 children learned 
arithmetic; and four high schools, in which from 55o 
to 600 learned grammar and logic. Then follows a 



POPULATION AND WEALTH, J57 

list of the religious houses and churches : among the 
charitable institutions are reckoned 30 hospitals capa- 
ble of receiving more than i ,000 sick people. Here 
too it may be mentioned that Villani reckons the 
beggars of Florence at i7,cx)0, with the addition of 
4,cxx) paupers and sick persons and religious mendi- 
cants.^ These mendicants were not all Florentines, 
but received relief from the city charities. The big 
wool factories are numbered at upwards of two hun- 
dred; and it is calculated that from sixty to eighty 
thousand pieces of cloth were turned out yearly, to 
the value in all of about 1,200,000 florins. More 
than 30,000 persons lived by this industry. The 
calimala factories, where foreign cloths were manu- 
factured into fine materials, numbered about twenty. 
These imported some 10,000 pieces of cloth yearly, 
to the value of 300,000 florins. The exchange offi- 
ces are estimated at about eighty in number. The 
fortunes made in Florence by trade and by banking 
were colossal for those days. Villlani tells us that the 
great houses of the Bardi and Peruzzi lent to our 
King Edward III. more than 1,365,000 golden flor- 
ins.2 * And mark this,' he continues, * that these 
moneys were chiefly the property of persons who 
had given it to them on deposit.' This debt was to 
have been recovered out of the wool revenues and 
other income of the English; in fact, the Bardi and 
Peruzzi had negotiated a national loan, by which they 
hoped to gain a superb percentage on their capital 

> X. 163. • xi. 88. 



158 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

The speculation, however, proved unfortunate; and 
the two houses would have failed, but for their enor- 
mous possessions in Tuscany. We hear, for exam- 
ple, of the Bardi buying the villages of Vernia and 
Mangona in 1337.^ As it was, their credit received 
a shock from which it never thoroughly recovered*, 
and a little later on, in 1342, after the ruinous wars 
with the La Scala family and Pisa, and after the loss 
of Lucca, they finally stopped payment and declared 
themselves bankrupt.^ The shock communicated by 
this failure to the whole commerce of Christendom is 
well described by Villani.^ The enormous wealth 
amassed by Florentine citizens in commerce may be 
still better imagined when we remember that the 
Medici, between the years 1434 and 1471, spent 
some 663,755 golden florins upon alms and public 
works, of which 400,000 were supplied by Cosimo 
alone. But to return to Villani; not content with the 
statistics which I have already extracted, he proceeds 
to calculate how many bushels of wheat, hogsheads 
of wine, and head of cattle were consumed in Flor- 
ence by the year and the week.* We are even told 
that in the month of July 1280, 40,000 loads of mel- 
ons entered the gate of San Friano and were sold in 
the city. Nor are the manners and the costume of 
the Florentines neglected: the severe and decent 
dress of the citizens in the good old times (about 



• xi. 74. On this occasion a law was passed forbidding citizens to 
become lords of districts within the territory of Florence, 
« xi. 38. ' xi. 88. •• xi. 94. 



VARIOUS STATISTICS. S59 

1260) is contrasted with the new-fangled fashions 
introduced by the French in 1342.^ In addition to 
all this miscellaneous information may be mentioned 
what we learn from Matteo Villani concerning the 
foundation of the Monte or Public Funds of Florence 
in the year 1345,^ as well as the remarkable essay 
upon the economical and other consequences of the 
plague of 1348, which forms the prelude to his con- 
tinuation of his brother s Chronicle.^ 

In his survey of the results of the Black Death, 
Matteo notices not only the diminution of the popu- 
lation, but the alteration in public morality, the dis- 
placement of property, the increase in prices, the 
diminution of labor, and the multiplication of law- 
suits, which were the consequences direct or indirect 
of the frightful mortality. Among the details which 
he has supplied upon these topics deserve to be 
commemorated the enormous bequests to public 
charities in Florence — 350,000 florins to the Society 
of Orsammichele, 2 5, 000 to the Compagnia della 
Misericordia, and 2 5, 000 to the Hospital of Santa 
Maria Nuova. The poorer population had been al- 
most utterly destroyed by the plague ; so that these 
funds were for the most part wasted, misapplied, and 
preyed upon by mal-administrators> The foundation 
of the University of Florence is also mentioned as one 
of the extraordinary consequences of this calamity. 

• vi. 69; xii. 4. * iii. 106. « i. i-*. 

< Matteo Villani expressly excepts the Hospital of S. Maria Nuova, 
which seems to have been well managed. 



i6o RENAISSANCE IN ITALY 

^ The whole work of the Villanl remains a monu- 
ment, unique in mediaeval literature, of statistical 
patience and economical sagacity, proving how far 
in advance of the other European nations were the 
Italians at this period.^ Dante's aim is wholly dif- 
ferent. Of statistics and of historical detail we gain 
but little from his prose works. His mind was that 
of a philosopher who generalizes, and of a poet who 
seizes salient characteristics, not that of an annalist 
who aims at scrupulous fidelity in his account of 
facts. I need not do more than mention here the 
concise and vivid portraits, which he has sketched in 
the Divine Comedy, of all the chief cities of Italy; 
but in his treatise 'De Monarchia' we possess the 
first attempt at political speculation, the first essay 
in constitutional philosophy, to which the literature 
of modern Europe gave birth; while his letters ad- 
dressed to the princes of Italy, the cardinals, the 
emperor and the republic of Florence, are in like 
manner the first instances of political pamphlets setting 
forth a rationalized and consistent system of the rights 
and duties of nations. In the *De Morarchia' Dante 
bases a theory of universal government upon a defi- 
nite conception of the nature and the destinies of 
humanity. Amid the anarchy and discord of Italy, 
where selfishness was everywhere predominant, and 
where the factions of the Papacy and Empire were 
but cloaks for party strife, Dante endeavors to bring 

> We must remember that our own annalists, Holinshed and Stow, 
were later by two centuries than the Villani. 



DANTE'S ESSAYS. 36 1 

his countrymen back to a sublime ideal of a single 
monarchy, a true imperium, distinct from the priestly 
authority of the Church, but not hostile to it, — nay, 
rather seeking sanction from Christ's Vicar upon earth 
and affording protection to the Holy See, as deriving 
its own right from the same Divine source. Political 
science in this essay takes rank as an independent 
branch of philosophy, and the points which Dante 
seeks to establish are supported by arguments im- 
plying much historical knowledge, though quaintly 
scholastic in their application. The Epistles contain 
the same thoughts : peace, mutual respect, and obe- 
dience to a common head, the duty of the chief to 
his subordinates and of the governed to their lord, 
are urged with no less force, but in a more familiar 
style and with direct allusion to the events which 
called each letter forth. They are in fact political 
brochures addressed by a thinker from his solitude 
to the chief actors in the drama of history around 
him. Nor would it here be right to omit some 
notice of the essay * De Vulgari Eloquio,' which, 
considering the date of its appearance, is no less 
original and indicative of a new spirit in the world 
than the treatise *De Monarchia.' It is an attempt 
to write the history of Italian as a member of the 
Romance Languages, to discuss the qualities of its 
several dialects, and to prove the advantages to be 
gained by the formation of a common literary tongue 
for Italy. Though Dante was of course devo''<^ of 
what we now call comparative philology, and haa 



2^2 FENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

but little knowledge of the first beginnings of the 
languages which he' discusses, yet it is not more than 
the truth to say that this essay applies the true 
method of critical analysis for the first time to the 
subject, and is the first attempt to reason scientifically 
upon the origin and nature of a modern language. 
While discussing the historical work of Dante 
and the Villani, it is impossible that another famous 
Florentine should not occur to our recollection, 
whose name has long been connected with the civic 
contests that resulted in the exile of Italy's greatest 
poet from his native city. Yet it is not easy for a 
foreign critic to deal with the question of Dino Com- 
pagni's Chronicle — a question which for years has 
divided Italian students into two camps, which has 
produced a voluminous literature of its own, and 
which still remains undecided. The point at issue 
is by no means insignificant. While one party con- 
tends that we have in this Chronicle the veracious 
record of an eye-witness, the other asserts that it 
is the impudent fabrication of a later century, com- 
;^o.sed on hints furnished by Dante, and obscure 
(documents of the Compagni family, and expressed 
i 1 language that has little of the fourteenth century. 
The one regards it as a faithful narrative, deficient 
only in minor details of accuracy. The other stig- 
matizes it as a wholly untrustworthy forgery, and 
calls attention to numberless mistakes, confusions, mis- 
conceptions, and misrepresentations of events, which 
place its genuineness beyond the pale of possibility 



DINO COMPAGNI. 263 

After a careful consideration of Scheffer's, Fanfani's, 
Gino Capponi's, and Isidoro del Lungo's arg^u- 
ments, it seems to me clearly established that 
the Chronicle of Dino Compagni can no longer be 
regarded as a perfectly genuine document of four- 
teenth-century literature. In the form in which we 
now possess it, we are rather obliged to regard it as 
a rifacimento of some authentic history, compiled 
during the course of the fifteenth century in a prose 
which bears traces of the post-Boccaccian style of 
composition.! Yet the authority of Dino Compagni 
has long been such, and such is still the literary 
value of the monograph which bears his name, that 
it would be impertinent to dismiss the ' Chronicle ' 
unceremoniously as a mere fiction. I propose, 
therefore, first to give an account of the book on 
its professed merits, and then to discuss, as briefly 
as I can, the question of its authenticity. 

The year 1300, which Dante chose for the date 

'The first critic to call Compagni's authenticity in question was 
Pietro Fanfani, in an article oi II Pievano Arlotto, 1858. The cause 
was taken up, shortly after this date, by an abler German authority, 
P. Scheffer-Boichorst. The works which I have studied on this sub- 
ject are, i. Florentiner Studien, von P. Scheffer-Boichorst, Leipzig, 
Hirzel, 1874, 2. Dino Compagni vendicato dalla Calunnia di Scrit- 
tore delta Cronica, di Pietro Fanfani, Milano, Carrara, 1875. 3- ^^^ 
Chronik des Dino Compagni, Versuch ei7ier Rcttiuig, von Dr. Carl 
Hegel, Leipzig, Hirzel, 1875. 4- Die Chronik des Dino Compagni, 
Kritik der Hegelschen Schrift, von P. Scheffer-Boichorst, Leipzig, 
Hirzel, 1875. 5- The note appended to Gino Capponi's Storia delta 
Repubblica di Firenze. 6. Dino Compag7ii e la sua Chronica, per 
Isidoro del Lungo, Firenze, Le Moi.nier. Unluckily, the last-named 
work, though it consists already of two bulky volumes in large Svo, 
is not yet complete; and the part which will treat of the question of 
authorship and MS. authority has not appeared. 



264 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

of his descent with Virgil to the nether world, and 
which marked the beginning of Villani's 'Chronicle/ 
is also mentioned by Dino Compagni in the first sen- 
tence of the preface to his work. * The recollections 
of ancient histories,' he says, * have a long while 
stirred my mind to writing the perilous and ill-fated 
events, which the noble city, daughter of Rome, has 
suffered many years, and especially at the time of the 
Jubilee in the year 1300.' Dino Compagni, whose 
* Chronicle ' embraces the period between 1280 and 
131 2, took the popular side in the struggles of 1282, 
sat as Prior in 1289, and in 1301, and was chosen 
Gonfalonier of Justice in 1293. He was therefore a 
prominent actor in the drama of those troublous 
times. He died in 1324, two years and four months 
after the date of Dante's death, and was buried in 
the church of Santa Trinita. He was a man of the 
same stamp as Dante ;i burning with love for his 
country, but still more a lover of the truth; severe 
in judgment, but beyond suspicion of mere partisan- 
ship; brief in utterance, but weighty with personal 
experience, profound conviction, prophetic intensity 
of feeling, sincerity, and justice. As a historian, he 
narrowed his labors to the field of one small but 
highly finished picture. He undertook to narrate, 
the civic quarrels of his times, and to show how the 
commonwealth of Florence was brought to ruin by 

• The apostrophes to the citizens of Florence at large, and the im- 
precations on some of the worst offer ders among the party-leaders 
(especially in book ii. on the occasion of the calamities of ijoi) arc 
conceived and uttered in the style of i)ante. 



COMPAGNPS CHRONICLE, 265 

the selfishness of her own citizens: nor can his 
* Chronicle/ although it is b}' no means a master- 
piece of historical accuracy or of lucid arrangement, 
be surpassed for the liveliness of its delineation, the 
graphic clearness of its characters, the earnestness of 
its patriotic spirit, and the acute analysis which lays 
bare the political situation of a republic torn by fac- 
tions, during the memorable period which embraced 
the revolution of Giano della Bella and the struggles 
of the Neri and Bianchi. The comparison of Dino 
Compagni with any contemporary annalist in Italy 
shows that here again, in these pages, a new spirit 
has arisen. Muratori, proud to print them for the 
first time in 1726, put them on a level with the 
'Commentaries of Caesar*; Giordani welcomed their 
author as a second Sallust. The political sagacity 
and scientific penetration, possessed in so high a 
degree by the Florentines, appear in full maturity. 
Compagni's ' Chronicle ' heads a long list of similar 
monographs, unique in the literature of a single city.^ 

> Among these I may here mention Gino Capponi's history of the 
Ciompi Rebellion, Giovanni Cavalcanti's memoirs of the period be- 
tween 1420 and 1452, Leo Battista Alberti's narrative of Porcari's at- 
tempt upon the life of Nicholas V., Vespasiano's ' Biographies,* ana 
Poliziano's 'Essay on the Pazzi Conspiracy.' Gino Capponi, born 
about 1350, was Prior in 1396, and Gonfalonier of Justice in 1401 and 
141 8; he died in 142 1. Giovanni Cavalcanti was a zealous admirer 
of Cosimo de' Medici; he composed his 'Chronicle' in the prison of 
the Stinche, where he was unjustly incarcerated for a debt to the 
Commune of Florence. Vespasiano da Bisticci contributed a series 
of most valuable portraits to the literature of Italy: all the great men 
of his time are there delineated with a simplicity that is the sign of 
absolute sincerity. Poliziano was present at the murder of Giuliano 
de' Medici in the Florentine Duomo. The historian 3 of the sixteenth 
century will be noticed together further on 



265 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, , 

The arguments against the authenticity of Dino 
Compagni's ' Chronicle ' may be arranged in three 
groups. Theyfr^/ concerns the man himself. It Is 
urged that, with the exception of his offices as Prior 
and Gonfalonier, we have no evidence of his political 
activity, beyond what is furnished by the disputed 
' Chronicle.' According to his own account, DIno 
played a part of the first importance In the compli- 
cated events of 1280-13 12. ^^^ ^^ is not men- 
tioned by Giovanni Villani, by Filippo Vallani, or 
by Dante. There Is no record of his death, ex- 
cept a MS. note In the Magliabecchian Codex of 
nis 'Chronicle' of the date i5i4.i He Is known in 
literature as the author of a few lyrics and an oration 
to Pope John XXII., the style of which Is so rough 
and mediaeval as to make it incredible that the same 
writer should have composed the masterly paragraphs 
of the * Chronicle.' ^ The second group of arguments 
affects the substance of the ' Chronicle ' itself Though 
Dino was Prior when Charles of Valois entered Flor- 
ence, he records that event under the date of Sunday 
the fourth of November, whereas Charles arrived on 

> This is Isidore del Lungo's Codex A. The note occurs also in 
the Ashburnham MS. which Del Lungo refers to the fifteenth century. 

« On this point it is worth mentioning that some good critics refer 
the poems to an elder Dino Compagni, who sat as Ancient in 1251. 
•See the discussion of this question, as also of the authorship of the 
Intelligenza, claimed by Isidoro del Lungo for the writer of the 
' Chronicle,' in Borgognini's Essays {Scritti Vari, Bologna, Romag 
noli, 1877, vol. i.). With regard to the oration to Pope John XXII. 
date 1326, it must be noted that this performance was fitigt printed 
by Anton Francesco Doni in 1547, and that its genuineness may be 
disputed. See Carl Hegel, op. cit. pp. iS-aa. 



ARGUMENTS AG A INS! IT. 267 

the first of November, and the first Sunday of the 
month was the fifth. He differs from the concurrent 
testimony of other historians in making the affianced 
bride of Buondelmonte dei Buondelmonti a Giantruf- 
I fetti instead of an Amidei, and the Bishop of Arezzo 
a Pazzi instead of an Ubertini. He reckons the Arti 
at twenty-four, whereas they numbered twenty-one. 
He places the Coronation of Henry VII. in August, 
instead of in June, 13 12. He seems to refer to the 
Palace of the Signory, which could not have been 
built at the date in question. He asserts that a 
member of the Benivieni family was killed by one 
of the Galligai, whereas the murderer was of the 
blood of the Galli. He represents himself as hav- 
ing been the first Gonfalonier of Justice who de 
stroyed the houses of rebellious nobles, while Baldo 
de' Ruffoli, who held the office before him, had 
previously carried out the Ordinances. Speaking of 
Guido Cavalcanti about the year 1300, he calls him 
* uno giovane gentile ' ; and yet Guido had married 
the daughter of Farinata degli Uberti in 1266, and 
certainly did not survive 1300 more than a few 
months. The peace with Pisa, which was con- 
cluded during Compagni's tenure of the Gonfalon- 
ierate, is not mentioned, though this must have been 
one of the most important public events with which 
he was concerned. Chronology is hopelessly and 
inextricably confused; while inaccuracies and diffi- 
culties of the kind described abound on every page 
of the * Chronicle,' rendering the labor of its last 



l68 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

commentator and defender one of no small diffi 
culty. The third group of arguments assails the 
language of the ' Chronicle * and Its MS. authority. 
FanfanI, who showed more zeal than courtesy in his 
destructive criticism, undertook to prove that Dino's 
style In general is not distinguished for the * purity, 
simplicity, and propriety ' of the trecento ^ ; that it 
abounds in expressions of a later period, such as 
armata for oste, marciare for andare, accib for ax- 
cioccJit, onde for affincJie; that numerous Imitations 
of Dante can be traced In it; and that to an acute 
student of early Italian prose its palpable quattro- 
centismo is only slightly veiled by a persistent affec- 
tation of fourteenth-century archaism. This argu- 
ment from style seems the strongest that can be 
brought against the genuineness of the ' Chronicle ' ; 
for while It is possible that Dino may have made 
Innumerable blunders about the events In which he 
took a part, it is Incredible that he should have an- 
ticipated the growth of Italian by at least a century. 
Yet judges no less competent than FanfanI in this 
matter of style, and far more trustworthy as wit- 
nesses, VIncenzo NannuccI, Gino Capponi, Isldoro 
del Lungo, are of opinion that Dino s ' Chronicle ' 

» The most important of Fanfani's numerous essays on the Com- 
pagni controversy, together with minor notes by his supporters, are 
collected in the book quoted above, Note to p. 241. Fanfani exceeds 
all bounds of decency in the language he uses, and in his arrogant 
claims to be considered an unique judge of fourteenth-century style. 
These claims he bases in some measure upon the fact that he de- 
ceived the Delia Crusca by a forgery of his own making, which was 
actually accepted for the Archivio Storico. See op. cit p. 181. 



VARIOUS HYPOTHESES. 369 

is a masterpiece of Italian fourteenth-century prose; 
and till Italian experts are agreed, foreign critics mus* 
suspend their judgment. The analysis of style re 
ceives a different development from Scheffer-Boi- 
chorst. In his last essay he undertakes to show that 
many passages of the * Chronicle,' especially the im- 
portant one which refers to the Ordinamenti delta 
GiMstizia, have been borrowed from Villani.^ This 
critical weapon is difficult to handle, for it almost 
always cuts both ways. Yet the German historian 
has made out an undoubtedly good case by proving 
Villani's language closer to the original Ordinamenti 
than Compagni's. With regard to MS. authority, 
the codices of Dino's ' Chronicle ' extant in Italy 
are all of them derived from a MS. transcribed by 
Noferi Busini and given by him to Giovanni Maz- 
zuoli, surnamed Lo Stradino, who was a member 
of the Florentine Academy and a greedy collector 
of antiquities. This MS. bears the date i5i4. The 
recent origin of this parent codex, and the question- 
able character of Lo Stradino, gave rise to not un- 
reasonable suspicions. Fanfani roundly asserted that 
the • Chronicle ' must have been fabricated as a hoax 
upo I the uncritical antiquary, since it suddenly ap- 
peared without a pedigree, at a moment when such 
forgeries were not uncommon. Scheffer-Boichorst, 
in his most recent pamphlet, committed himself to 
the opinion that either Lo Stradino himself, nick- 
named Cronaca Scorretta by his Florentine cronies, 

* Die Chronik, etc., pp. 53-57. 



270 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

or one ot his contemporaries, was the forger.^ An 
Italian impugner of the ' Chronicle,' Giusto Grion 
of Verona, declared for Antonfrancesco Doni as the 
fabricator.^ These hypotheses, however, are, to say 
the least, unlucky for their suggestors, and really 
serve to weaken rather than to strengthen the de- 
structive line of argument. There exists an elder 
codex of which Fanfani and his followers were igno- 
rant. It is a MS. of perhaps the middle of the fif- 
teenth century, which was purchased for the Ash- 
burnham Library in 1846. This MS. has been 
minutely described by Professor Paul Meyer; and 
Isidoro del Lungo publishes a fac-simile specimen 
of one of its pages.^ By some unaccountable neg- 
ligence this latest and most determined defender of 
Compagni has failed to examine the MS. with his 
own eyes. 

Thus stands the question of Dino Compagni *s 
' Chronicle.' The defenders of its authenticity, forced 
to admit Compagni's glaring inaccuracies, fall back 
upon arguments deduced from the internal spirit 
of the author, from the difficulties of fabricating a 
[)ersonal narrative instinct with the spirit of the four- 
teenth century, from the hypotheses of a copyist's 
errors or of a thorough-going literary process of re- 



I Die Chronik, etc., p. 39. • See Hegel's op. cit. p. 6. 

3 See Del Lungo, op. cit. vol. ii. pp. 19-23, and fac-simile, to face 
p. I. This MS. was bought by G. Libri from the Pucci family in 1840, 
and sold to Lord Ashburnham. Del Lungo identifies it with a MS. 
which Braccio Compagni in the seventeenth centurv snolce of as ' la 
copia piu antica, appresso il Signor senatore Pandolfmi. 



DEFENDERS OF THE CHRONICLE. 271 

writing at a later date, from the absence of any 
positive evidence of forgery, and from general con- 
siderations affecting the validity of destructive criti- 
cism. One thing has been clearly proved in the 
course of the controversy, that the book can have 
but little historical value when not corroborated. 
Still there is a wide gap between inaccuracy and 
willful fabrication. Until the best judges of Italian 
style are agreed that the ' Chronicle ' could not have 
been written in the second decade of the fourteenth 
century, the arguments adduced from an examination 
of the facts recorded in it are not strong enough to 
demonstrate a forgery. There is the further ques- 
tion of cui bono? which in all problems of literary 
forgery must first receive some probable solution. 
What proof is there that the vanity or the cupidity 
of any parties was satisfied by its production ? A 
book exists in a MS. of about 1450, acquires some 
notice in a MS. of i5i4, but is not published to the 
world until 1726. Supposing it to have been a 
forgery, the labor of concocting it must have been 
enormous. With all its defects, the ' Chronicle ' 
would still remain a masterpiece of historical re- 
search, imagination, sympathy with bygone modes 
of feeling, dramatic vigor, and antiquarian command 
of language. But who profited by that labor ? Not 
tho author of the forgery, since he was dead or buried 
more than two centuries before his fabrication became 
famous. Not the Compagni family; for there is no 
evidence to show that thev had piqued themselves 



171 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

upon being the depositaries of their ancestor's mas- 
terpiece, nor did they make any effort, at a period 
when the printing-press was very active, to give this 
jewel of their archives to the public. If it be objected 
that, on the hypothesis of genuineness, the MS. of 
the ' Chronicle ' must have been divulged before the 
beginning of the sixteenth century, we can adduce 
two plausible answers. In the first place, Dino was 
the partisan of a conquered cause; and his family 
had nothing to gain by publishing an acrimonious 
political pamphlet during the triumph of his antago- 
nists. In the second place, MSS. of even greater 
literary importance disappeared in the course of the 
fourteenth century, to be reproduced when their sub- 
jects again excited interest in the literary world. 
The history of Dante's treatise De Vulgari Eloquio 
is a case in point. With regard to style, no foreigner 
can pretend to be a competent judge. Reading the 
celebrated description of Florence at the opening of 
Dino's * Chronicle,' I seem indeed, for my own part, 
to discern a post-Boccaccian artificiality of phrase. 
Still there is nothing to render it impossible that the 
' Chronicle,' as we possess it, in the texts of i45o (?) 
and 1 5 14, may be a rifacimento of an elder and 
simpler work. In that section of my history which 
deals with Italian literature of the fifteenth century, 
I shall have occasion to show that such remodeling 
of ancient texts to suit the fashion of the time was 
3y no means unfrequent. The curious discrepancies 
between the Trattato della Famiglia as written by 



THEOR\ OF RIFACIMENTO. 273 

Albert! and as ascribed to Pandolfini can only be ex- 
plained upon the hypothesis of such rifacimento. If 
the historical inaccuracies in which the ' Chronicle ' 
abounds are adduced as convincing proof of its fabri- 
cation, it may be replied that the author of so mas- 
terly a romance would naturally have been anxious 
to preserve a strict accordance with documents of 
acknowledged validity. Consequently, these very 
blunders might not unreasonably be used to combat 
the h}-pothesis of deliberate forgery. It is remark- 
able, in this connection, that only one meager refer- 
ence is made to Dante by the Chronicler, who, had 
he been a literary forger, would scarcely have omitted 
to enlarge upon this theme. Without, therefore, 
venturing to express a decided opinion on a ques- 
tion which still divides the most competent Italian 
judges, I see no reason to despair of the problem 
being ultimately solved in a way less unfavorable to 
Dino Compagni than Scheffer-Boichorst and Fanfani 
would, approve of. Considered as the fifteenth cen- 
tury rifacime^ito of an elder document, the ' Chronicle 
would lose its historical authority, but would still re 
main an interesting monument of Florentine litera- 
ture, and would certainly not deserve the unqualified 
names of ' forgery ' and * fabrication ' that have been 
unhesitatingly show^ered upon it.^ 

> It is to be hoped that the completion of Del Lungo's work may 
put an end to the Compagni controversy, either by a solid vindica- 
tion of the 'Chronicle,' or by so weak a defense as to render further 
partisanship impossible. So far as his book has hitherto appeared, 
it contains no signs of an ultimate triumph. The weightiest point 
contained in it is the discovery ot the Ashbumham MS. If Del 



2 74 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

The two chief Florentine historians of the fifteenth 
century are Lionardo Bruni of Arezzo, and Poggio 
Bracciolini, each of whom, in his capacity of Chan- 
cellor to the Republic, undertook to write the annals 
of the people of Florence from the earliest date to his 
own time. Lionardo Aretino wrote down to the year 
1404, and Poggio Bracciolini to the year 1455. Their 
histories are composed in Latin, and savor much of 
the pedantic spirit of the age in which they were pro- 
jected.i Both of them deserve the criticism of Mach- 
iavelli, that they filled their pages too exclusively with 
the wars and foreign affairs in which Florence was 
engaged, failing to perceive that the true object of the 
historian is to set forth the life of a commonwealth as 
a continuous whole, to draw the portrait of a state 
with due regard to its especial physiognomy.^ To 
this critique we may add that both Lionardo and 
Poggio were led astray by the false taste of the earlier 
Renaissance. Their admiration for Livy and the pe- 
dantic proprieties of a labored Latinism made them 
pay more attention to rhetoric than to the substance 
of their work.^ We meet with frigid imitations and 

Lungo fails to prove his position, we shall be left to choose between 
Scheffer-Boichorst's absolute skepticism or the modified view adopted 
by me in the text. 

' I^oggio's Historia Populi Florentini is given in the XXth vol- 
ume of Muratori's collection. Lionardo's Istoria Ftorentina, trans- 
lated into Italian by Donato Acciajuoli, has been puolished by Le 
Monnier (Firenze, 1861). The high praise which Ugo Foscolo be- 
stowed upon the latter seems due to a want of familiarity. 

s See the preface to the History of Florence, by Machiavelli. 

3 Lionardo Bruni, lor example, complains in the preface to his 
history that it is impossible to accommodate the rude names of his 
personages to a polkbed style 



BR UNI AND POGGIO. 375 

bombastic generalities, where concise details and 
graphic touches would have been acceptable. In 
short, these works are rather studies of style in an 
age when the greatest stylists were but bunglers and 
beginners, than valuable histories. The Italians of 
the fifteenth century, striving to rival Cicero and 
Livy, succeeded only in becoming lifeless shadows 
of the past. History dictated under the inspiration 
of pedantic scholarship, and with the object of repro- 
ducing an obsolete style, by men of letters who had 
played no prominent part in the Commonwealth,^ 
cannot pretend to the vigor and the freshness that 
we admire so much in the writings of men like the 
Villani, Gino Capponi, Giovanni Cavalcanti, and many 
others. Yet even after making these deductions, it 
may be asserted with truth that no city of Italy at 
this period of the Renaissance, except Florence, could 
boast historiographers so competent. Vespaslano at 
the close of his biography of Poggio estimates theii 
labor in sentences which deserve to be remembered: 
• Among the other singular obligations which the city 
of Florence owes to Messer Lionardo and to Messer 
Poggio, is this, that except the Roman Common- 
wealth no republic or free state in Italy has been so 
distinguished as the town of Florence, in having had 
two such notable writers to record its doings as Mes- 
ser Lionardo and Messer Poggio; for up to the time 
o\ their histories everything was in the greatest ob- 

> Both Poggio and Lionardo began life as Papal secretaries; th« 
latter was not made a citizen of Florence till late in his career. 



»76 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

scurlty. If the republic of Venice, which can show 
so many wise citi'zens, had the deeds which they have 
done by sea and land committed to writing, it would 
be far more illustrious even than it is now. And 
Galeazzo Maria, and Filippo Maria, and all the Vis- 
conti — their actions would also be more famous than 
they are. Nay, there is not any republic that ought 
not to give every reward to writers who should com- 
memorate its doings. We see at Florence that from 
the foundation of the city to the days of Messer Lion- 
ardo and Messer Poggio there was no record of any- 
thing that the Florentines had done, in Latin, or his- 
tory devoted to themselves. Messer Poggio follows 
after Messer Lionardo, and writes like him in Latin. 
Giovanni Villani, too, wrote an universal history in 
the vulgar tongue of whatsoever happened in every 
place, and introduces the affairs of Florence as they 
happened. The same did Messer Filippo Villani, 
following after Giovanni Villani. These are they 
alone who have distinguished Florence by the his- 
tories that they have written.' ^ The pride of the 
citizen and a just sense of the value of history, to- 
gether with sound remarks upon Venice and Milan, 
mingle curiously in this passage with the pedantry 
of a fifteenth-century scholar. 

The historians of the first half of the sixteenth 

century are a race apart. Three generations of 

pedantic erudition and of courtly or scholastic trifling 

had separated the men of letters from the men of 

> ViU di Uomini Il/uslri, ^SLtb^ra., 1859; j^ 495. 



THE DOCTRINAIRES. »77 

action, and had made literature a thing of curiosity. 
Three generations of the masked Medicean despot- 
ism had destroyed the reality of freedom in Flor- 
ence, and had corrupted her citizens to the core. 
Yet, strange to say, it was at the end of the fifteenth 
century that the genius of the thirteenth revived. 
Italian literature was cultivated for its own sake 
under the auspices of Lorenzo de' Medici. The 
year 1494 marks the resurrection of the spirit of old 
liberty beneath the trumpet-blast of Savonarola's 
oratory. Amid the universal corruption of public 
morals, from the depth of sloth and servitude, when 
the reality of liberty was lost, when fate and fortune 
had combined to render constitutional reconstruction 
impossible for the shattered republics of Italy, the 
intellect of the Florentines displayed itself with more 
than its old vigor in a series of the most brilliant 
political writers who have ever illustrated one short 
but eventful period in the life of a single nation. 
That period is marked by the years 1494 and 1537. 
It embraces the two final efforts of the Florentines 
to shake off the Medicean yoke, the disastrous siege 
at the end of which they fell a prey to the selfishness 
of their own party- leaders, the persecution of Savo- 
narola by Pope Alexander, the Church-rule of Popes 
Leo and Clement, the extinction of the elder branch 
of the Medici in its two bastards (Ippolito, poisoned 
by his brother Alessandro, and Alessandro poig- 
narded by his cousin Lorenzino), and the final 
\^ipse of liberty beneath the Spain-appointed dy- 



2jS RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

nasty of the younger Medicean line in Duke Cosimo 
The names of the historians of this period are Nic- 
colo Machlavelli, Jacopo Nardi, Francesco Guiccl- 
ardini, Filippo Nerli, Donato Glannotti, Benedetto 
Varchi, Bernardo Segni, and Jacopo Pltti.^ In these 
men the mental qualities which we admire in the 
Villanl, Dante, and Compagni reappear, combined, 
indeed, in different proportions, tempered with the 
new philosophy and scholarship of the Renaissance, 
and permeated with quite another morality. In the 
interval of two centuries freedom has been lost.) It 
is only the desire for freedom that survives. But 
that, after the apathy of the fifteenth century, is still 
a passion. The rectitude of instinct and the intense 
convictions of the earlier ao^e have been exchano^ed 
for a scientific clairvoyance, a 'stoic-epicurean ac- 
ceptance ' of the facts of vitiated civilization, which 
in men like Guicciardini and Machlavelli Is absolutely 
appalling. Nearly all the authors of this period bear 
a double face. They write one set of memoirs for 
the public, and another set for their own delectation. 
In their inmost souls they burn with the zeal for lib- 
erty: yet they sell their abilities to the highest bidder 



» The dates of these historians are as follows :- 


- 


BORN. 


DIED. 


Machiavelli . . . 1469 


1527 


Nardi 






1476 


1556 


Guicciardini 






1482 


1540 


Nerli . 






1485 


1536 


Giannotti . 






1492 


1572 


Varchi 






1502 


1565 


Segni 






1504 


1558 


PitU . 






1519 


1589 



THEIR LIVES. J79 

— to Popes whom they despise, and to Dukes whom 
they revile in private. What makes the literary 
labors of these historians doubly interesting is that 
they were carried on for the most part independ- 
ently; for though they lived at the same time, and 
in some cases held familiar conversation with each 
other, they gave expression to different shades of 
political opinion, and their histories remained in man- 
uscript till some time after their death.^ The student 
of the Renaissance has, therefore the advantage of 
comparing and confronting a whole band of independ- 
ent witnesses to the same events. Beside their own 
deliberate criticism of the drama in which all played 
some part as actors or spectators, we can use the not 
less important testimony they afford unconsciously, 
according to the bias of private or political interest 
Sy which they are severally swayed. 

The Storia Fiorentina of Varchi extends from the 
year i527 to the year 1538; that of Segni from i527 
to 1 555; that of Nardi from 1494 to i552; that of 
Pitti from 1494 to i529; that of Nerli from 1494 to 
1537, that of Guicciardini from 1420 to i5o9. The 
prefatory chapters, which in most cases introduce the 
special subject of each history, contain a series of ret- 
rospective surveys over the whole history of Flor- 
ence extremely valuable for the detailed information 
they contain, as well as for the critical judgments of 

1 Varchi, it is true, had Nardi's History of Florence and Guicciar- 
dini's History of Italy before him while he was compiling his History 
of Florence. But Segni and Nerli were given for the first time to the 
press in the last century; Pitti in 1842, and Guicciardini's History oj 
Florenci in 1859. 



i8o RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

yiien whose acumen had been sharpened to the ut- 
most by their practical participation in politics. It 
will not, perhaps, be superfluous to indicate the dif- 
ferent parts played by these historians in the events 
of their own time. Guicciardini, it is well known, had 
governed Bologna and Romagna for the Medicean 
Popes. He too was instrumental in placing Duke 
Cosimo at the head of the republic in 1536. At Na- 
ples, in 1535, he pleaded the cause of Duke Ales- 
sandro against the exiles before Charles V. Nardi 
on this occasion acted as secretar}^ and advocate for 
Filippo Strozzi and the exiles; his own history was 
composed in exile at Venice, where he died. Segni 
was nephew of the Gonfalonier Capponi, and shared 
the anxieties of the moderate liberals during the siege 
of Florence. Pitti was a member of the o^reat house 
who contested the leadership of the republic with the 
Medici in the fifteenth century; his zeal for the popu- 
lar party and his hatred of the Palleschi may still per- 
haps be tinctured with ancestral animosity. Giannotti, 
in whose critique of the Florentine republic we trace 
a spirit no less democratic than Pitti's, was also an 
actor in the events of the siege, and afterwards ap~ 
peared among the exiles. In the attempt made by 
the Cardinal Salviati (1537) to reconcile Duke Cosi- 
mo and the adherents of Filippo Strozzi, Giannotti 
was chosen as the spokesman for the latter. He 
wrote and died in exile at Venice. Nerli again took 
part in the events of those troublous times, but on the 
wrong side, by mixino- himself up with the exiles and 



VARCHI. «8l 

acting as a spy upon their projects. All the authors 
I have mentioned were citizens of Florence, and some 
of them were members of her most illustrious fami- 
lies. Varchi, in whom the flame of Florentine pa- 
triotism burns brightest, and who is by far the most 
'copious annalist of the period, was a native of Monte- 
varchi. Yet, as often happens, he was more Floren- 
tine than the Florentines; and of the events which he 
describes, he had for the most part been witness. 
Duke Cosimo employed him to write the history; it 
is a credit both to the prince and to the author that 
its chapters should be full of criticisms so outspoken, 
and of aspirations after liberty so vehement On the 
very first page of his preface Varchi dares to write 
these words respecting Florence — 'divenne, dico, di 
stato piuttosto corrotto e licenzioso, tirannide, che di 
sana e moderata repubblica, principato * ; ^ in which he 
deals blame with impartial justice all round. It must, 
however, be remembered that at the time when Var- 
chi wrote, the younger branch of the Medici were 
firmly established on the throne of Florence. Be- 
tween this branch and the elder line there had always 
been a coldness. Moreover, all parties had agreed 
to accept the duchy as a divinely appointed instru- 
ment for rescuing the city from her factions and re- 
ducing her to tranquillity.2 

It would be beyond the purpose of this chapter to 

« * It passed, I say, from the condition of a corrupt and ill-con- 
ducted commonwealth to tyranny, rather than from a healthy and 
well-tempered republic to principality.' 

• See Arch. Star. vol. i. p. xxxv. 



28a RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

enter into the details of the history of Florence be- 
tween 1 527 and 1531 — those years of her last strug- 
gle for freedom, which have been so admirably de- 
picted by her great political annalists. It is rather 
my object to illustrate the intellectual qualities of 
philosophical analysis and acute observation for which 
her citizens were eminent. Yet a sketch of the sit- 
uation is necessary in order to bring into relief the 
different points of view maintained by Segni, Nardi, 
Varchi, Pitti, and Nerli respectively. 

'^ At the period in question Florence was, accord- 
ing to the universal testimony of these authors, too 
corrupt for real liberty and too turbulent for the tran- 
quil acceptance of a despotism. The yoke of the 
Medici had destroyed the sense of honor and the 
pride of the old noble families; while the policy pur- 
sued by Lorenzo and the Popes had created a class 
of greedy professional politicians. The city was not 
content with slavery; but the burghers, eminent for 
wealth or ability, were egotistical, vain, and mutually 
jealous. Each man sought advantage for himself. 
Common action seemed impossible. The Medicean 
party, or Palleschi, were either extreme in their de- 
votion to the ruling house, and desirous of establish- 
ing a tyranny; or else they were moderate and anx- 
ious to retain the Medici as the chiefs of a dominant 
oligarchy. The point of union between these two 
divisions of the party was a prejudice in favor of 
class rule, a hope to get power and wealth for them- 
selves through the elevation of the princely family 



FLORENTINE PARTIES, I^2y. 283 

The popular faction on the other hand agreed in 
wishing to place the government of the city upon 
a broad republican basis. But the leaders of this 
section of the citizens favored the plebeian cause 
from different motives. Some sought only a way 
to riches and authority, which they could never have 
opened for them under the oligarchy contemplated 
by the Palleschi. Others, styled Frateschi or Piag- 
noni, clung to the ideas of liberty which were asso- 
ciated with the high morality and impassioned creed 
of Savonarola. These were really the backbone of 
the nation, the class which might have saved the 
state if salvation had been possible. Another sec- 
tion, steeped in the study of ancient authors and 
imbued with memories of Roman patriotism, thought 
it still possible to secure the freedom of the state by 
liberal institutions. These men we may call the Doc- 
trinaires. Their panacea was the establishment of a 
mixed form of government, such as that which Gian- 
notti so learnedly illustrated. To these parties must 
he added the red republicans, or Arrabbiati — a name 
originally reserved for the worst adherents of the 
Medici, but now applied to fanatics of Jacobin com- 
plexion — and the Libertines, who only cared for 
such a form of government as should permit them 
to indulge their passions. 

Amid this medley of interests there resulted, as 
i matter of fact, two policies at the moment when 
the affairs of Florence, threatened by Pope and 
Emperor in combination, and deserted by France 



284 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

and the rest of Italy, grew desperate. One was 
that of the Gonfalonier Capponi, who advocated 
moderate counsels and an accommodation with 
Clement VI I. The other was that of the Gon 
falonier Carducci, who pushed things to extremi 
ties and used the enthusiasm of the Frateschi foi 
sustaining the spirit of the people in the siege.^ 
The latter policy triumphed over the former. Its 
principles were an obstinate belief in Francis, though 
he had clearly turned a deaf ear to Florence; con- 
fidence in the generals, Baglioni and Colonna, who 
were privately traitors to the cause they professed 
to defend; and reliance on the prophecies of Savona- 
rola, supported by the preaching of the Friars Foiano, 
Bartolommeo, and Zaccaria. Ill-founded as it was 
in fact, the policy of Carducci had on its side 
all that was left of nobility, patriotism, and the fire 
of liberty among the Florentines. In spite of the 
hopelessness of the attempt, we cannot now read 
without emotion how bravely and desperately those 
last champions of freedom fought, to maintain the 



• Guicciardini, writing his Ricordi during the first months of the 
siege, remarks upon the power of faith {^Op. Ined. vol. i. p. 83, Com- 
pare p. 134): ' Esemplo a' di nostri ne ^ grandissimo questa ostina- 
zione de' Fiorentini, che essendosi contro a ogni ragione del mondo 
messi a aspcttare la guerra del papa e imperadore, senza speranza 
di alcuno soccorso di altri, disuniti e con mille difficult^., hanno sos- 
tenuto in quelle mura giS. sette mesi gli e serciti, e quali non si sa- 
rebbe creduto che avessino sostenuti sette di; e condotto le cose in 
luogo che se vincessino, nessuno piil se ne maraviglierebbe, dove 
prima da tutti erano giudicati perduti; e questa ostinazione ha caus- 
ata in gran parte la fede di nou polere perire, secondo le predicazion! 
di Fra Jeronimo da Ferrara.' 



THE SIEGE. 285 

independence of their city at any cost, and in the 
teeth of overwhelming opposition. The memory of 
Savonarola was the inspiration of this policy. Fer- 
rucci was its hero. It failed. It was in vain that 
the Florentines had laid waste Valdarno, destroyed 
their beautiful suburbs, and leveled their crown of 
towers. It was in vain that they had poured forth 
their treasures to the uttermost farthing, had borne 
plague and famine without a murmur, and had turned 
themselves at the call of their country into a nation 
of soldiers, Charles, Clement, the Palleschi, and Mal- 
atesta Baglioni — enemies without the city walls and 
traitors within its gates — were too powerful for the 
resistance of burghers who had learned but yester- 
day to handle arms and to conduct a war on their 
own account.^ Florence had to capitulate. The ven- 
omous Palleschi, Francesco Guicciardini and Baccio 
Valori, by proscription, exile, and taxation, drained 
the strength and broke the spirit of the state. Caesar 
and Christ's Vicar, a new Herod and a new Pilate, 
embraced and made friends over the prostrate corpse 
of sold and slaughtered liberty. Florence was paid 
as compensation for the insult offered to the Pontiff 
in the sack of Rome. 

The part played by Filippo Strozzi in this last 
drama of the liberties of Florence is feeble and dis- 
creditable, but at the same time historically instruc- 
tive, since it shows to what a point the noblest of 
the Florentines had fallen. All Pitti's invectives 

* See above, p. 238, for what Giannotti says of the heroic Fcrrucci. 



286 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

against the Ottimati, bitter as they may be, are 
justified by the unvarnished narrative we read upon 
the pages of Varchi and Segni concerning this most 
vicious, selfish, vain, and brilliant hero of historical 
romance. Married to Clarice de' Medici, by whom 
he had a splendid family of handsome and vigorous 
sons, he was more than the rival of his wife's princely 
relatives by his wealth. Yet though he made a pro- 
fession of patriotism, Filippo failed to use this great 
influence consistently as a counterpoise to the Me- 
dicean authority. It was he, for instance, who ad- 
vised Lorenzo the younger to make himself Duke 
of Florence. Distinguished, as he was, above all 
men of his time for wit, urbanity, accomplishments, 
and splendid living, his want of character neutralized 
these radiant gifts of nature. His private morals were 
infamous. He encouraged by precept and example 
the worst vices of his age and nation, consorting with 
young men whom he instructed in the arts of disso- 
lute living, and to whom he communicated his own 
selfish Epicureanism. To him in a great measure 
may be attributed the corruption of the Florentine 
aristocracy in the sixteenth century. In his public 
action he was no less vacillating than unprincipled 
in private life. After prevailing upon Ippolito and 
Alessandro de* Medici to leave Florence in 1 527, he 
failed to execute his trust of getting Pisa from their 
grasp (moved, it is said, by a guilty fondness for the 
young and handsome Ippolito), nor did he afterwards 
sliare any of the hardships and responsibilities of the 



FILIPPO STROZZI. 287 

siege. Indeed, he then found it necessary to retire 
into exile in France, on the excuse of superintending 
his vast commercial affairs at Lyons. After the res- 
toration of the Medici he returned to Florence as 
the courtier of Duke Alessandro, whom he aided and 
abetted in his juvenile debaucheries. Quarreling with 
Alessandro on the occasion of an insult offered to 
his daughter Luisa, and the accusation of murder 
brought against his son Piero, he went into opposi- 
tion and exile, less for political than for private rea- 
sons. After the murder of Alessandro, he received 
Lorenzo de' Medici, the fratricide, with the title of 
' Second Brutus ' at Venice. Meanwhile it was he 
who paid the dowry of Catherine de' Medici to the 
Duke of Orleans, helping thus to strengthen the house 
of princes against whom he was plotting, by that 
splendid foreign alliance which placed a descendant 
of the Florentine bill-brokers on the throne of France. 
After all these vicissitudes Filippo Strozzi headed an 
armed attack upon the dominions of Duke Cosimo, 
was taken in the battle of Montemurlo, and finally 
was murdered in that very fortress, outside the Porto 
a Faenza, which he had counseled Alessandro to con- 
struct for the intimidation of the Florentines.^ The 
historians with the exception of Nerli agree in de- 
scribing him as a pleasure-loving and self-seeking 
man, whose many changes of policy were due, not 

• See Varchi, vol. iii. p. 61, for the first stone laid of this castle. 
It should be said thai accounts disagree about Filippo's death. Nerli 
very distinctly asserts that he committed suicide. Segni inclines t» 
ti:ie belief that he was murdered by the creatures of Duke Cosimo. 



f88 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

to conviction, but to the desire of gaining the utmost 
license of disorderly living. At the same time we 
cannot deny him the fame of brilliant mental quali- 
ties, a princely bearing, and great courage. 

'The moral and political debility which proved the 
real source of the ruin of Florence is accounted for in 
different ways by the historians of the siege. Pitti, 
whose insight into the situation is perhaps the keen- 
est, and who is by far the most outspoken, does not 
refer the failure of the Florentines to the cowardice 
or stupidity of the popular party, but to the ma- 
lignity of the Palleschi, the double-dealing and ego- 
tism of the wealthy nobles, who to suit their own 
interests favored now one and now another of the 
parties. These Ottimati — as he calls them, by a title 
borrowed from classical phraseology — whether they 
professed the Medicean or the popular cause, were 
always bent on self-aggrandizement at the expense 
of the people or their princes.^ The sympathies of 
Pitti were on the side of the plebeians, whose policy 
during the siege was carried out by the Gonfalonier 
Carducci. At the same time he admitted the feeble- 
ness and insufficiency of many of these men, called 

1 He goes so far as to assert that Leo X. and Clement VII. wished 
to give a liberal constitution to Florence, but that their plans were 
frustrated by the avarice and jealousy of the would-be oligarchs. See 
Arch. Stor. vol. i. pp. 121, 131. The passages quoted fro-m his 'Apol- 
ogia de'Cappucci,* relative to Machiavelli, Filippo Strozzi, and Fran- 
cesco Guicciardini {Arch. Stor. vol. i. pp. xxxix. xxxviii.), are very 
instructive; with such greedy self-seeking oligarchs, it was impossi- 
ble for the Medicean Popes to establish any government but a tyranny 
in Florence. 



VIEWS OF FIVE HISTORIANS. 289 

from a low rank of life and from mechanical trades 
to the administration of the commonwealth. The 
state of Florence under Piero Soderini — that *non 
mai abbastanza lodato cavaliere,' as he calls him — 
was the ideal to which he reverted with longing 
eyes. Segni, on the other hand, condemns the am- 
bition of the plebeian leaders, and declares his opin- 
ion that the State could only have been saved by 
the more moderate among the influential citizens. 
He belonged in fact to that section of the Medi- 
cean party which Varchi styles the Neutrals. He 
had strong aristocratic leanings, and preferred a 
government of nobles to the popular democracy 
which flourished under Francesco Carducci. While 
he desired the liberty of Florence, Segni saw that 
the republic could not hold its own against both 
Pope and Emperor, at a crisis when the King of 
France, who ought to have rendered assistance in 
the hour of need, was bound by the treaty of Cam- 
bray, and by the pledges he had given to Charles 
in the persons of his two sons. The policy of which 
Segni approved was that which Niccolo Capponi had 
prepared before his fall — a reconciliation with Cle- 
ment through the intervention of the Emperor, ac- 
cording to the terms of which the Medici should 
have been restored as citizens of paramount author- 
ity, but not as sovereigns. Varchi, while no less 
alive to the insecurity of Carducci's policy, was an- 
imated with a more democratic spirit. He had none 
of Segni's Whig leanings, but shared the patriotic 



,^9C RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

enthusiasm which at that supreme ir oment made 
the whole state splendidly audacious in the face 
of insurmountable difficulties. Both Seg-ni and Var- 
chi discerned the exaggerated and therefore baneful 
influence of Savonarola's prophecies over the popu- 
lace of Florence. In spite of continued failure, the 
people kept trusting to the monk's prediction that, 
after her chastisement, Florence would bloom forth 
with double luster, and that angels in the last re- 
sort would man her walls and repel the invaders. 
There is something pathetic in this delusion of a 
great city, trusting with infantine pertinacity to the 
promises of the man whom they had seen burned 
as an impostor, when all the while their statesmen 
and their generals were striking bargains with thr 
foe. Nardi is more sincerely Piagnone than either 
Segni or Varchi. Yet, writing after the events of 
the siege, his faith is shaken; and while he recordr 
his conviction that Savonarola was an excellent 
Nomothetes, he questions his prophetic mission, 
and deplores the effect produced by his vain prom- 
ises. Nerli, as might have been expected from a 
noble married to Caterina Salviati, the niece of Leo 
and the aunt of Cosimo, who had himself been 
courtier to Clement and privy councilor to Ales- 
sandro, sustains the Medicean note throughout his 
commentaries. 

Thus from these five authors, writing from differ- 
ent points of view, we gain a complete insight into 
the complicated politics of Florence, at a perioG when 



NARDI. 291 

her vitality was still vigorous, but when she had lost 
all faculty for centralized or concerted action. In 
sagacity, in the power of analysis with which they 
pierce below the surface, trace effects to causes, dis- 
cern character, and regard the facts of history as the 
proper subject-matter of philosophical reflection, they 
have much in common. He who has seen Rem- 
brandt's painting of the dissecting-room might con- 
struct for himself another picture, In which the five 
grave faces of these patient observers should be bent 
above the dead and diseased body of their native 
city. Life Is extinct. Nothing is left for science 
but, scalpel In hand, to lay bare the secret causes 
of dissolution. Each anatomist has his own opinion 
to deliver upon the nature of the malady. Each re- 
cords the facts revealed by the autopsy according to 
his own impressions. 

v The literary qualities of these historians are very 
different, and seem to be derived from essential dif- 
ferences in their characters. PIttI Is by far the most 
brilliant in style, concentrated In expression to the 
point of epigram, and weighty In judgment. Nardi, 
though deficient In some of the most attractive char- 
acteristics of the historian. Is Invaluable for sincerity 
of Intention and painstaking accuracy. The philo- 
sophical, rhetorical, and dramatic passages which add 
so much splendor to the works of Guicciardlnl are 
absent from the pages of Nardi. He is anxious to 
present a clear picture of what happened; but he 
cannot make it animated, and he never reflects at 



2gi RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

length upon the matter of his history. At the same 
time he lacks the naivete which makes Corio, Alle- 
gretti, Infessura, and Matarazzo so amusing. He 
gossips as little as Machiavelli, and has no profundity 
to make up for the want of piquancy. The interest 
of his chronicle is greatest in the part which concerns 
Savonarola, though even here the peculiarly reticent 
and dubitative nature of the man is obvious. While 
he sympathizes with Savonarola's political and moral 
reforms, he raises a doubt about his inner sincerity, 
and does not approve of the attitude of the Piagnoni.^ 
In his estimation of men Nardi was remarkably cau- 
tious, preferring always to give an external relation 
of events, instead of analyzing motives or criticising 
character.2 He is in especial silent about bad men 
and criminal actions. Therefore, when he passes 
an adverse judgment (as, for instance, upon Cesare 
Borgia), or notes a dark act (as the stuprum com- 
mitted upon Astorre Manfredi), his corroboration of 
historians more addicted to scandal is important. 
Segni is far more lively than Nardi, while he is not 
less painstaking to be accurate. He shows a par- 
tisan feeling, especially in his admiration for Niccolo 



> Book ii. cap. i6. 

2 See lib. ii. cap. 34: ' Nel nostro scrivere non intendiamo far 
giudizio delle cose incerte, e massimamente della intenzione e animo 
segreto degli uomini, che non apparisce chiara se non per congettura 
e riscontro delle cose esteriori. E perb stando lermo il primo pro- 
posito, vogliamo raccontare quanto piCi possibile ci sia, la veritS. delle 
cose fatte, pid tosto che delle pensate o immaginate.' This is digni- 
fied and noble language in an age which admired the brilliant false 
hoods of Giovio. 



SEGNI AND NERLI. 293 

Capponi and his prejudice against Francesco Car- 
ducci, which gives the relish of personality that 
Nardi s cautiously dry chronicle lacks. Rarely have 
the entangled events of a specially dramatic period 
been set forth more lucidly, more succinctly, and with 
greater elegance of style. Segni is deficient, when 
compared with Varchi, only perhaps in volume, mi- 
nuteness, and that wonderful mixture of candor, en- 
thusiasm, and zeal for truth which makes Varchi 
incomparable. His sketches of men, critiques, and 
digressions upon statistical details are far less copious 
than Varchi's. But in idiomatic purity of language he 
is superior. Varchi had been spoiled by academic 
habits of composition. His language is diffuse and 
lumbering. He lacks the vivacity of epigram, se- 
lection, and pointed phrase. But his Storia Fioren- 
tina remains the most valuable repertory of informa- 
tion we possess about the later vicissitudes of the 
republic, and the charm of detail compensates for 
the lack' of style. Nerli is altogether a less interest- 
ing writer than those that have been mentioned ; yet 
some of the particulars which he relates, about Savo- 
narola's reform of manners, for example, and the 
literary gatherings in the Rucellai gardens, are such 
as we find nowhere else. 

Many of my readers will doubtless feel that too 
much time has been spent in the discussion of these 
annalists of the siege of Florence. Yet for the stu- 
dent of history they have a value almost unique 
They suggest the possibilities of a true science of 



294 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

comparative history, and reveal a vivacity of the his- 
toric consciousness which can be paralleled by no other 
nation. How different might be our conception of 
the vicissitudes of Athens between 404 and 338 b. c.- 
if we possessed a similar Pleiad of contemporary' 
Greek authors! 

Having traced the development of historical re- 
search and political philosophy in Florence from the 
year 1300 to the fall of the Republic, it remains to 
speak of the two greatest masters of practical and 
theoretical statecraft — Francesco Guicciardini and 
Niccolo Machiavelli. These two writers combine all 
the distinctive qualities of the Florentine historio- 
graphers in the most eminent perfection. At the 
same time they are, not merely as authors but also 
as men, mirrors of the times in which they both 
played prominent parts. In their biographies and in 
their works we trace the spirit of an age devoid of 
moral sensibility, penetrative in analysis, but deficient 
in faith, hope, enthusiasm, and stability of character. 
The dry light of the intellect determined their judg- 
ment of men, as well as their theories of government. 
On the other hand, the sqrdid conditions of existence 
to which they were subjected as the servants of cor- 
rupt states, or the instruments of wily princes — as 
diplomatists intent upon the plans of kings like Fer- 
dinand or adventurers like Cesare Borgia, privy coun- 
cilors of such Popes as CleiiKnit VII. and such tyrants 
as Duke Alessandro de' Medici — distorted their phi- 
losophy and blunted their instincts. P^or the student 



GUICCIARDINI AND MACHIAVELLI. 295 

of the sixteenth century they remain riddles, the solu- 
tion of which is difficult, because by no strain of the 
imagination is it easy to place ourselves in their posi- 
tion. One half of their written utterances seem to 
be at variance with the other half Their ictions 
often contradict their most brilliant and emphatic pre- 
cepts ; while contemporaries disagree about their pri- 
vate character and public conduct. All this confusion, 
through which it is now perhaps impossible to discern 
what either Guicciardini or Machiavelli really waS; 
and what they really felt and thought, is due to the 
anomaly of consummate ability and unrivaled knowl- 
edge of the world existing without religious or politi- 
cal faith, in an age of the utmost depravity of public 
and private morals. No criticism could be more 
stringent upon the contemporary disorganization of 
society in Italy than is the silent witness of these 
men, sublimely great in all mental qualities, but help- 
lessly adrift upon a sea of contradictions and of doubts, 
ignorant of the real nature of mankind in spite of all 
their science, because they leave both goodness and 
beauty out of their calculations. 

\ Francesco Guicciardini was born in 1482. Iti 
i5o5, at the age of twenty-three, he had already si 
distinguished himself as a student of law that he was 
appointed by the Signoria of Florence to read the 
Institutes in pubhc. However, as he preferred ac- 
tive to professorial work, he began at this time to 
practice at the bar, where he soon ranked as an able 
advocate and eloquent speaker. This reputation, 



296 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

together with his character for gravity and insight, 
determined the Signoria to send him on an embassy 
to the Court of Ferdinand of Aragon in i5i2. Thus 
Guicciardini entered on the real work of his life as a 
diplomatist and statesman. We may also conclude 
with safety that it was at the court of that crowned 
hypocrite and traitor to all loyalty of soul that he 
learned his first lessons in political cynicism. The 
court of Spain under Ferdinand the Catholic was a 
perfect school of perfidy, where even an Italian 
might discern deeper reaches of human depravity 
and formulate for his own guidance a philosophy of 
despair. It was whispered by his enemies that here, 
upon the threshold of his public life, Guicciardini sold 
his honor by accepting a bribe from Ferdinand.^ 
Certain it is that avarice was one of his besetting 
sins, and that from this time forward he preferred 
expediency to justice, and believed in the policy of 
supporting force by clever dissimulation.^ Return- 
ing to Florence, Guicciardini was, in i5i5, deputed 
to meet Leo X. on the part of the Republic at Cor- 
tona. Leo, who had the faculty of discerning able 
men and making use of them, took him into favor, 
and three years later appointed him Governor of 
Reggio and Modena. In i52i Parma was added to 
his rule. Clement VII. made him Viceroy of Ro- 

• See the 'Apologia de' Cappucci," Arch. Stor. vol. iv. part 2, 
P 318. 

« For the avarice of Guicciardini, see Varchi, vol. i. p. 318. His 
Ricordi Politici amply justify the second, though not the first, clause 
ol this sentence. 



GUICCIARDTNI'S LIFE. f97 

magna In 1623, and in i526 elevated him to the rank 
of Lieutenant-General of the Papal army. In conse- 
quence of this high commission, Guicciardini shared 
in the humiliation attaching to all the officers of the 
League who, with the Duke of Urbino at their head, 
suffered Rome to be sacked and the Pope to be im- 
prisoned in 1527. The blame of this contemptible 
display of cowardice or private spite cannot, how- 
ever, be ascribed to him: for he attended the armies 
of the League not as general, but as counselor and 
chief reporter. It was his business not to control 
the movements of the army so much as to act as 
referee in the Pope's interest, and to keep the Vati- 
can informed of what was stirring in the camp. 
In 1 53 1 Guicciardini was advanced to the governor- 
ship of Bologna, the most important of all the Papal 
lord-lieutenancies. This post he resigned in 1534 
on the election of Paul III., preferring to follow the 
fortunes of the Medicean princes at Florence. In 
this sketch of his career I must not omit to mention 
that Guicciardini was declared a rebel in 1627 by the 
popular government on account of his well-known 
Medicean prejudices, and that in 1530 he had been 
appointed by Clement VII. to punish the rebellious 
citizens. On the latter occasion he revenged himself 
for the insults offered him In 1 527 by the cruelty 
with which he pushed proscription to the utmost 
limits, relegating his enemies to unhealthy places of 
exile, burdening them with intolerable fines, and 
using all the indirect means which his ingenuity 



RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

could devise for forcing them into outlawry and con- 
tumacy.^ Therefore when he returned to inhabit 
Florence, he did so as the creature of the Medici, 
sworn to maintain the bastard Alessandro in his 
power. He was elected a member of the Senate of 
eighty; and so thoroughly did he espouse the cause 
of his new master, that he had the face to undertake 
the Duke's defense before Charles V. at Naples in 
1535. On this occasion Alessandro, who had ren- 
dered himself unbearable by his despotic habits, and 
in particular by the insults which he offered to 
women of all ranks and conditions in Florence, was 
arraigned by the exiles before the bar of Caesar. 
Guicciardini won the cause of his client, and restored 
Alessandro with an Imperial confirmation of his des- 
potism to Florence. This period of his political 
career deserves particular attention, since it displays 
a glaring contradiction between some of his unpub- 
lished compositions and his actions, and confirms the 
accusations of his enemies.^ That he should have 
preferred a government of Ottimati, or wealthy no- 
bles, to a more popular constitution, and that he 
should have adhered with fidelity to the Medicean 



• See Varchi, book xii. (and especially cap. xxv.), for these arts; 
he says, ' Nel che messer Francesco Guicciardini si scoperse pid 
crudele e piu appassionato degli altri.' 

« Knowing what sort of tyrant Alessandro was, and remembering 
that Guicciardini had written {Ricordi, No. ccxlii.): 'La calcina con 
che si murano gli stati de' tiranni 6 il sangue de* cittadini: perb do- 
verebbe sforzarsi ognuno che nella citti sua non s'avessino a murare 
tali palazzi,' it is very difficult to approve of his advocacy of the 
Duke. 



HIS CHARACTER. 399 

faction in Florence, is no ground for censure.^ But 
when we find him in private unmasking the artifices 
of the despots by the most relentless use of frigid 
criticism, and advocating a mixed government upon 
the type of the Venetian Constitution, we are con- 
strained to admit with Varchi and Pitti that his sup- 
port of Alessandro was prompted less by loyalty than 
by a desire to gratify his own ambition and avarice 
under the protective shadow of the Medicean tyr- 
anny.2 He belonged in fact to those selfish citizens 
whom Pitti denounces, diplomatists and men of the 
world, whose thirst for power induced them to play 
into the hands of the Medici, wishing to suck the 
state ^ themselves, and to hold the prince in the lead- 
ing-strings of vice and pleasure for their own advan- 

» Though even here the selfish ambition of the man was apparent 
to contemporaries: ' egli arebbe voluto uno stato col nome d' Ottimati, 
ma in fatti de' Pochi, nel quale larghissima parte, per le sue molte e 
rarissime qualitSi, meritissimamente gli si venia.' — Varchi, vol. i. 
p. 318. 

2 Guicciardini's Storia Fiorentina and Reggimento di Firenzt 
{Op. Ined. vols. i. and iii.) may be consulted for his private critique 
of the Medici. What was the judgment passed upon him by con- 
temporaries may be gathered from Varchi, vols. i. pp. 238, 318; ii. 410; 
iii. 204. Segni, pp. 219, 332. Nardi, vol. ii. p. 287. Pitti, quoted in 
Arch. Stor. vol. i. p. xxxviii., and the ' Apologia de' Cappucci ' {Arch. 
Stor. vol. iv. pt. 2). It is, however, only fair to Guicciardini to record 
here his opinion, expressed in Ricordi, Nos. ccxx. and cccxxx., that 
it was the duty of good citizens to seek to guide the tyrant: ' Credo 
sia uficio di buoni cittadini, quando la patria viene in mano di tiranni, 
cercare d'avere luogo con loro per potere persuadere il bene, e de- 
testare il male; e certo 6 interesse della citta che in qualunque tempo 
gli uomini da bene abbino autoritk; e ancora che gli ignoranti e 
passionati di Firenze 1' abbino sempre intesa altrimenti, si accorger- 
ebbono quanto pestifero sarebbe il governo de' Medici, se non avessi 
intorno altri che pazzi e cattivi.* 

» See Varchi, vol. iii. p. 204. ' Che Cosimo. . . succiarsi lo stato' 



JOO RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

tage.^ After the murder of Alessandro, it was prin- 
cipally through Guicciardini s influence that Cosimo 
was placed at the head of the Florentine Republic 
with the title of Duke. Cosimo was but a boy, and 
much addicted to field sports. Guicciardini therefore 
reckoned that, with an assured income of 12,000 
ducats, the youth would be contented to amuse him- 
self, while he left the government of Florence in the 
hands of his Vizier.^ But here the wily politician 
overreached himself. Cosimo wore an old head on 
his young shoulders. With decent modesty and a 
becoming show of deference, he used Guicciardini as 
his ladder to mount the throne by, and then kicked 
the ladder away. The first days of his administration 
showed that he intended to be sole master in Flor- 
ence. Guicciardini, perceiving that his game was 
spoiled, retired to his villa in i537 and spent the last 
years of his life in composing his histories. The 
famous Istoria d' Italia was the work of one year of 
this enforced retirement. The question irresistibly 
rises to our mind, whether some of the severe criti 

» Pitti dips his pen in gall when he describes these citizens: ' Co 
test! vogliosi Ottimati; i quali non hanno saputo mai ritrovare luogo 
che piaccia loro, sottomendosi ora a' Medici per I'ingorda avarizia; 
ora gittandosi al popolo, per non potere a modo loro tiraneggiare; 
ora rivendendolo a' Medici, vedutisi scoperti e raflfrenati da lui; e 
sempre mai con danno della Repubblica, e di ciascuna parte, in- 
quieti, insaziabili e fraudolenti.' — ' Apologia de' Cappucci,' Arch. 
Star. iv. pt. ii. p. 215. 

' Here is a graphic touch in Varchi's History, vol. iii. p. 202. 
Guicciardini is discussing the appointment of Cosimo de' Medici: 
'Gli dovessero esser pagati per suo piatto ogn' anno 12,000 fiorini d 
ore, c non piu, avendo il Guicciardino, abbassafido il viso e alzandt 
gli occhi, detto: " Un 12,000 fiorini d' oro 6 — un bello spenderc.*" 



THE ISTORIA Z>' ITALIA. 301 

cisms passed upon the Medici in his unpublished 
compositions were the fruit of these same bitter lei- 
sure hours.i Guicciardini died in 1 640 at the age of 
fifty-eight, without male heirs. 

Turning now from the statesman to the man of 
letters, we find in Guicciardini one of the most con- 
summate historians of any nation or of any age. The 
work by which he is best known, the Istoria d' Italia, 
is one that can scarcely be surpassed for masterly 
control of a very intricate period, for subordination 
of the parts to the whole, for calmness of judgment, 
and for philosophic depth of thought. Considering 
that Guicciardini in this great work was writing the 
annals of his own times, and that he had to disen- 
tangle the raveled skein of Italian politics in the 
sixteenth century, these qualities are most remarka- 
ble. The whole movement of the history recalls 
the pomp and dignity of Livy, while a series of 
portraits sketched from life with the unerring hand 
of an anatomist and artist add something of the vivid 
force of Tacitus. Yet Guicciardini in this work de- 
serves less commendation as a writer than as a 

• Pitti seems to have taken this view: see ' Apologia de' Cappucci ' 
{Arch. Stor. vol. iv. part ii. p. 329): ' Tosto che '1 duca Cosimo lo pose 
a sedere insieme con certi altri suoi colleg-hi, si adird malamente; e 
se la disputa della provvisione non l' avesse ritenuto, sarebbe ito a 
servire papa Pagolo terzo. Onde, restate confuso e disperato, si trat- 
teneva alia sua villa di Santa Margarita a Montici; dove transportato 
dalla stizza ritocco in molte parti la sua Istoria, per mostrare di non 
essere stato della setta Pallesca; e dove potette, accattd 1' occasione 
di parere istrumento della Repubblica.' Guicciardini's own apology 
for his treatment of the Medici, in the proemio to the treatise Del 
Reggitnento di Firenze, deserves also to be read. 



30a RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

thinker. There is a manifest straining to secure 
style, by manipulation and rehandling, which con- 
trasts unfavorably with the unaffected ease, the preg- 
nant spontaneity, of his unpublished writings. His 
periods are almost interminable, and his rhetoric is 
prolix and monotonous. We can trace the effort 
to emulate the authors of antiquity without the ease 
which is acquired by practice or the taste that comes 
with nature. 

The transcendent merit of the history is this — 
that it presents us with a scientific picture of politics 
and of society during the first half of the sixteenth 
century. The picture is set forth with a clairvoy- 
ance and a candor that are almost terrible. The 
author never feels enthusiasm for a moment: no 
character, however great for good or evil, rouses 
him from the attitude of tranquil disillusioned criti- 
cism. He utters but few exclamations of horror or 
of applause. Faith, religion, conscience, self-subor- 
dination to the public good, have no place in his 
list of human motives; interest, ambition, calculation, 
envy, are the forces which, according to his experi- 
ence, move the world. That the strong should tram- 
ple on the weak, that the wily should circumvent the 
innocent, that hypocrisy and fraud and dissimula- 
tion should triumph, seems to him but natural. His 
whole theory of humanity is tinged with the sad gray 
colors of a stolid, cold-eyed, ill-contented, egotistical 
indifference. He is not angry, desperate, indignant, 
but phlegmatically prudent, face to face with the ruin 



GUICCIARDINI'S PHILOSOPHY. 303 

of his country. For him the world was a game of 
intrigue, in which his friends, his enemies, and him- 
self played parts, equally sordid, with grave faces and 
hearts bent only on the gratification of mean desires. 
Accordingly, though his mastery of detail, his com- 
prehension of personal motives, and his analysis of 
craft are alike incomparable, we find him incapable 
of forming general views with the breadth of philo- 
sophic insight or the sagacity of a frank and inde- 
pendent nature. The movements of the eagle and 
the lion must be unintelligible to the spider or the 
fox. It was impossible for Guicciardini to feel the 
real greatness of the century, or to foresee the new 
forces to which it was giving birth. He could not 
divine the momentous issues of the Lutheran schism; 
and though he perceived the immediate effect upon 
Italian politics of the invasion of the French, he failed 
to comprehend the revolution marked out for the 
future in the shock of the modern nations. While 
criticising the papacy, he discerned the pernicious 
results of nepotism and secular ambition: but he 
had no instinct for the necessity of a spiritual and 
religious regeneration. His judgment of the political 
situation led him to believe that the several units of 
the Italian system might be turned to profit and ac- 
count by the application of superficial remedies, — by 
the development of despotism, for example, or of 
oligarchy, when in reality the decay of the nation 
was already past all cure. 
\ Two other masterpieces from Guicciardini's pen, 



304 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

the Dialogo del Reggimento di Firenze and the Storia 
Fiorentina, have been given to the world during the 
last twenty years. To have published them immedi- 
ately after their author's death would have been inex- 
pedient, since they are far too candid and outspoken 
to have been acceptable to the Medicean dynasty. 
Yet in these writings we find Guicciardini at his best. 
Here he has not yet assumed the mantle of the rheto- 
rician, which in the Istoria d Italia sits upon him 
somewhat cumbrously. His style is more sponta- 
neous; his utterances are less guarded. Writing for 
himself alone, he dares to say more plainly what he 
thinks and feels. At the same time the political sa- 
gacity of the statesman is revealed in all its vigor. I 
have so frequently used both of these treatises that 
I need not enter into a minute analysis of their con- 
tents. It will be enough to indicate some of the 
passages which display the literary style and the 
scientific acumen of Guicciardini at their best. The 
Reggimento di Firenze is an essay upon the form of 
government for which Florence was best suited. 
Starting with a discussion of Savonarola's constitu- 
tion, in which ample justice is done to the sagacity 
and promptitude by means of which he saved the 
commonwealth at a critical juncture (pp. 27-30), the 
interlocutors pass to an examination of the Medicean 
tyranny (pp. 34-49). This is one of the masterpieces 
of Guicciardini's analysis. He shows how the admin- 
istration of justice, the distribution of public honors, 
and the foreign policy of the republic were perverted 



OPERE INEDITE. 305 

by this family. He condemns Cosimo's tyrannical 
application of fines and imposts (p. 68), Piero the 
younger 's insolence (p. 46), and Lorenzo's appropria- 
tion of the public moneys to his private use (p. 43). 
Yet while setting forth the vices of this tyranny in 
laneuao[-e which even Sismondi would have been con- 
tented to translate and sign, Guicciardini shows no 
passion. The Medici were only acting as befitted 
princes eager for power, although they crushed 
the spirit of the people, discouraged political ardor, 
extinguished military zeal, and did all that in them 
lay to enervate the nation they governed. The scien- 
tific statist acknowledges no reciprocal rights and du- 
ties between the governor and the governed. It is 
a trial of strength. If the tyrant gets the upper 
hand, the people must expect to be oppressed. If, 
on the other side, the people triumph, they must take 
good care to exterminate the despotic brood: ' The 
one true remedy would be to destroy and extinguish 
them so utterly that not a vestige should remain, and 
to employ for this purpose the poignard or poison, as 
may be most convenient; otherwise the least surviv- 
ing spark is certain to cause trouble and annoyance 
for the future' (p. 21 5). The same precise criticism 
lays bare the weakness of democracy. Men, says 
Guicciardini, always really desire their own power 
more than the freedom of the state (p. 5o), and the 
motives even of tyrannicides are very rarely pure 
(pp. 53-54). The governments established by the 
liberals are full of defects. The Consiglio Grande, 



106 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

for example, of the Florentines is ignorant in its 
choice of magistrates, unjust in its apportionment of 
taxes, scarcely less prejudiced against individuals than 
a tyrant would be, and incapable of diplomatic foreign 
policy (pp. 58-69). Then follows a discussion of the 
relative merits of the three chief forms of govern- 
ment — the Governo dell' Uno, the Governo degli 
Ottimati, and the Governo del Popolo (p. 129). 
Guicciardini has already criticised the first and the 
third.i He now expresses a strong opinion that the 
second is the worst which could be applied to the act- 
ual conditions of the Florentine Republic (p. 130). 
His panegyric of the Venetian constitution (pp. 139- 
41) illustrates his plan for combining the advantages 
of the three species and obviating their respective 
evils. In fact he declares for that Utopia of the six- 
teenth century — the Governo Misto — a political in- 
vention which fascinated the imagination of Italian 
statesmen much in the same way as the theory of 
perpetual motion attracted scientific minds in the last 
century.^ What follows is an elaborate scheme for 

' Cf. Ricordi, cxl.: 'Chi disse uno popolo, disse veiamente uno 
animale pazzo, pieno ni mille errori, di mille confusioni, sanza gusto, 
sanza diletto, sanza stability.' It should be noted that Guicciardini 
I ere and elsewhere uses the term Popolo in its fuller democratic 
sense. The successive enlargements of the burgher class in Flor- 
ence, together with the study of Greek and Latin political philosophy, 
had introduced the modern connotation of the term. 

2 A lucid criticism of the three forms oi government is contained 
in Guicciardini's Comment on the second chapter of the first book of 
Machiavelli's Discorsi {Op. Ined. vol. i. p. 6): ' E non ^ dubio che il 
governo misto delle tre spezie, principi, ottimati e popolo, ^ migliore 
e piu stabile che uno governo scmplice di qualunque delle tre spezie, 
e massime quando 6 misto in modo che di qualunque spezie h tolto il 
buono e lasciato indietro il cattivc^ ' \T;)chiavelli had himself, in the 



GOVERNO MIS TO. 307 

applying the principles of the Governo Misto to the 
existino^ state of thincrs in Florence. This lucid and 
learned disquisition is wound up (p. i88) with a 
mournful expression of the doubt which hung like 
a thick cloud over all the political speculations of 
both Guicciardini and Machiavelli: ' I hold it very 
doubtful, and I think it much depends on chance 
whether this disorganized constitution will ever take 
new shape or not . . . and as I said yesterday, I 
should have more hope if the city were but young; 
seeing that not only does a state at the commence- 
ment take form with greater facility than one that 
has grown old under evil governments, but things 
always turn out more prosperously and more easily 
while fortune is yet fresh and has not run its course,' 
etc.^ In reading the Dialogue on the Constitution 
of Florence it must finally be remembered that 
Guicciardini has thrown it back into the year 1494, 
and that he speaks through the mouths of four in- 
terlocutors. Therefore we may presume that he 

passage criticised, examined the three simple governments and de- 
clared in favor of the mixed as that which gave stability to Sparta, 
Rome, and Venice. The same line of thought may be traced in the 
political speculations of both Plato and Aristotle. The Athenians 
and Florentines felt the superior stability of the Spartan and Venetian 
forms of government, just as a French theorist might idealize the 
English constitution. The essential element of the Governo Misto, 
which Florence had lost beyond the possibility of regaining it, was a 
body of hereditary and patriotic patricians. This gave its strength 
to Venice; and this is that which hitherto has distinguished the 
English nation. 

» Compare Ricordi Politici e Civili, No. clxxxix., for a lament of 
this kind over the decrepitude of kingdoms, almost sublime in iU 
stoicism. 



3o8 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

intended his readers to regard it as a work of 
speculative science rather than of practical political 
philosophy. Yet it is not difficult to gather the 
drift of his own meaning. 

The Istoria Fwrentina is a succinct narrative of 
the events of Italian History, especially as they con- 
cerned Florence, between the years 1378 and iSog. 
In other words it relates the vicissitudes of the Re- 
public under the Medici, and the administration of 
the Gonfalonier Soderini. This masterpiece of his- 
torical narration sets forth with brevity and frankness 
the whole series of events which are rhetorically and 
cautiously unfolded in the Istoria d' Italia. Most no- 
ticeable are the characters of Lorenzo de' Medici 
(cap. ix.), of Savonarola (cap. xvii.), and of Alexan- 
der VI. (cap. xxvii.). The immediate consequences 
of the French invasion have never been more ably 
treated than in Chapter xi., while the whole progress 
of Cesare Borgia in his career of villany is analyzed 
with exquisite distinctness in Chapter xxvi. The wis- 
dom of Guicciardini nowhere appears more ripe, or 
his intellect more elastic, than in the Istoria Fiore^i' 
Una. Students who desire to gain a still closer in- 
sight into the working of Guicciardini s mind should 
consult the 403 Ricordi Politici e Civili collected in 
the first volume of his Opere Inedite, These have all 
the charm which belongs to occasional utterances, and 
are fit, like proverbs, to be ^yprn for jewels on the fin- 
ger of time. 

The biography of Niccolo Machiavelli consists for 



MACHIAVELU'S LIFE. 309 

the most part of a record of his public services to the 
State of Florence. He was born on May 3, 1469, 
of parents who belonged to the prosperous middle 
class of Florentine citizens. His ancestry was noble; 
for the old tradition which connected his descent 
with the feudal house of Montespertoli has been 
confirmed by documentary evidence.^ His fore- 
fathers held offices of high distinction in the Com- 
monwealth; and though their wealth and station 
had decreased, Machiavelli inherited a small landed 
estate. His family, who were originally settled in 
the Val di Pesa, owned farms at San Casciano and 
in other villages of the Florentine dominion, a list 
of which may be seen in the return presented by 
his father Bernardo to the revenue office in 1498.2 
Their wealth was no doubt trivial in comparison with 
that which citizens amassed by trade in Florence; 
for it was not the usage of those times to draw 
more than the necessaries of life from the Villa: 
all superfluities were provided by the Bottega in 
the town.3 Yet there can be no question, after a 
comparison of Bernardo Machiavelli's return of his 
landed property with Niccolo Machiavelli's will,* that 
the illustrious war secretary at all periods of his life 
owned just sufficient property to maintain his family 

> See Villani's Machiavelli, vol. i. p. 303. Ed. Le Monnier. 

* See vol. i. of the edition of Machiavelli, by Mess. Fanfani and 
Passerini, Florence, 1873; p. Iv. Villani's Machiavelli, ib. p. 306. 
The income is estimated at about 180/. 

* See Pandolfini, Trattato del Governo della Famiglia, 
< Fanfani and Passerini's edition, vol. i. p. xcii. 



3.IO-* RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

in a decent, if not a dignified, style. About his edu- 
cation we know next to nothing. Giovio ^ asserts 
that he possessed but little Latin, and that he owed 
the show of learning in his works to quotations 
furnished by Marcellus Virgilius. This accusation, 
which, whether it be true or not, was intended to 
be injurious, has lost its force in an age that, like 
ours, values erudition less than native genius. It 
is certain that Machiavelli knew quite enough of 
Latin and Greek literature to serve his turn; and 
his familiarity with sonie of the classical historians 
and philosophers is intimate. There is even too 
much parade in his works of illustrations borrowed 
from Polybius, Livy, and Plutarch: the only question 
is whether Machiavelli relied upon translations rather 
than originals. On this point, it is also worthy of 
remark that his culture was rather Roman than Hel- 
lenic. Had he at any period of his life made as 
profound a study of Plato's political dialogues as 
he made of Livy's histories, we cannot but feel 
that his theories both of government and state- 
craft might have been more concordant with a 
sane and normal humanity. 

In 1494, the date of the expulsion of the Medici, 
Machiavelli was admitted to the Chancery of the 
Commune as a clerk; and in 1498 he was appointed 
to the post of chancellor and secretary to the Died di 
liberta e pace. This place he held for the better half 
of fifteen years, that is to say, during the whole pe- 

> Elogia, cap. 87. 



PUBLIC EMPLOYMENT, 31 1 

nod of Florentine freedom. His diplomatic missions 
undertaken at the instance of the Republic were very 
numerous. Omitting those of less importance, we 
find him at the camp of Cesare Borgia in i5o2, in 
France in 1604, with Julius II. in i5o6, with the 
Emperor Maximilian in i5o7, and again at the 
French Court in i5io.^ To this department of 
his public life belong the dispatches and Re- 
lazioni which he sent home to the Signory of 
Florence, his Monograph upon the Massacre of 
Sinigaglia, his treatises upon the method of deal- 
ing with Pisa, Pistoja, and Valdichiana, and those 
two remarkable studies of foreign nations which are 
entitled Ritratti delle Cose delV Alemagna and Ri- 
tratti delle Cose di Francia, It was also in the year 
1 5oo that he laid the first foundations of his improved 
military system. The political sagacity and the pa- 
triotism for which Machiavelli has been admired are 
nowhere more conspicuous than in the discernment 
which suggested this measure, and in the indefatiga- 
ble zeal with which he strove to carry it into effect. 
Pondering upon the causes of Italian weakness when 
confronted with nations like the French, and com- 
paring contemporary with ancient history, Mach- 
iavelli came to the conclusion that the universal 
employment of mercenary troops was the chief 
secret of the insecurity of Italy. He therefore 

» Machiavelli never bore the title of Ambassador on these mis- 
sions. He went as Secretary. His pay was miserable. We find 
him receiving one ducat a da) for maintenance. 



$13 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

conceived a plan, for establishing a national mil- 
itia, and for placing the whole male population at 
the service of the state in times of war. He had 
to begin cautiously in bringing this scheme before 
the public ; for the stronghold of the mercenary 
system was the sloth and luxury of the burghers. 
At first he induced the Died di liberth e pace, or 
war office, to require the service of one man pei 
house throughout the Florentine dominion; but at 
the same time he caused a census to be taken 
of all men capable of bearing arms. His next step 
was to carry a law by which the permanent militia 
of the state was fixed at 10,000. Then in i5o3, 
having prepared the way by these preliminary meas- 
ures, he addressed the Council of the Burghers in 
a set oration, unfolding the principles of his proposed 
reform, and appealing not only to their patriotism 
but also to their sense of self-preservation. It was 
his aim to prove that mercenary arms must be ex- 
changed for a national militia, if freedom and inde- 
pendence were to be maintained. The Florentines 
allowed themselves to be convinced, and, on the 
recommendation of Machlavelll, they voted in i5o6 
a new magistracy, called the Nove delV Ordinanza 
e Milizia, for the formation of companies, the dis- 
cipline of soldiers, and the maintenance of the mil- 
itia in a state of readiness for active service.^ Mach- 



« Documents relating to the institution of the Nove deir Ordi- 
nanza e Milizia, and to its operations between December 6, 1506, 
and August 6, 15 12, from the pen of Machiavelli, will be found 



DEVELOPMENT OF HIS SYSTEM. 3 13 

iavelli became the secretary of this board; and much 
of his time was spent thenceforth in the levying of 
troops and the practical development of his system. 
It requires an intimate familiarity with the Italian 
, military system of the fourteenth and fifteenth cen- 
turies to understand the importance of this reform. 
We are so accustomed to the svstems of Militia, 
Conscription, and Landwehr, by means of which 
military service has been nationalized among the 
modern races, that we need to tax our imagination 
before we can place ourselves at the point of view 
of men to whom Machiavelli s measure was a nov- 
elty of genius.^ 

^. It must be admitted that the new militia proved 
ineffectual in the hour of need. To revive the mar- 
tial spirit of a nation, enervated by tyranny and given 
over to commerce, merely by a stroke of genius, was 
beyond the force of even Machiavelli. When Prato 
had been sacked in i5i2, the Florentines, destitute 
of troops, divided among themselves and headed by 

printed by Signor Canestrini in Arch. Stor. vol. xv. pp. 377 to 453. 

Machiavelli's treatise De re militari, or Ilibri sulV arte della guerra, 
was the work of his later life; it was published in 1521 at Florence. 

> Though Machiavelli deserves the credit of this military system, 
the part of Antonio Giacomini in carrying it into effect must not be 
forgotten. Pitti, in his ' Life of Giacomini ' {Arch. Stor. vol. iv, pt. 
ii. p. 241), says: ' Avendo per dieci anni continovi fatto prova nelle 
fazioni e nelle battaglie de' fanti del dominio e delli esterni, aveva 
troppo bene conosciuto con quanta piu sicurezza si potesse la repub- 
blica servire de' suoi propri che delli istranieri.' Machiavelli had 
gone as Commissary to the camp of Giacomini before Pisa in August 
1505; there the man of action and the man of theory came to an 
agreement: both found in the Gonfalonier Soderini a chief of the re- 
public capable of entering into their views. 



314 REiVAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

the excellent but* hesitating Piero Soderini, tlirew 
their gates open to the Medici. Giuliano, the brother 
of Pope Leo, and Lorenzo, his nephew, whose stat- 
ues sit throned in the immortality of Michael An- 
geles marble upon their tombs in San Lorenzo, dis- 
posed of the republic at their pleasure. Machiavelli, an 
War Secretary of the anti-Medicean government, wa? 
of course disgraced and deprived of his appointments. 
In i5i3 he was suspected of complicity in the con- 
juration of Pietropaolo Boscoli and Agostino Cap- 
poni, was imprisoned in the Bargello, and tortured tc 
the extent of four turns of the rack. It seems that 
he was innocent. Leo X. released him by the act 
of amnesty passed upon the event of his assuming 
the tiara ; and Machiavelli immediately retired to his 
farm near San Casciano. 

Since we are now approaching the most cntical 
passage of Machiavelli 's biography, it may be well 
to draw from his private letters a picture of the life to 
which this statesman of the restless brain was con- 
demned in the solitude of the country.^ Writing on 



• This letter may be compared with others of about the sam« 
date. In one (Aug. 3, 1514) he says: ' Ho lasciato dunque i pensiei; 
delle cose grandi e gravi, non mi diletta piu leggere le cose antiche 
n^ ragionare delle moderne; tutte si son converse in ragionament* 
dolci,' etc. Again he writes (Dtc. 4, 1514): ' Quod autem ad me per- 
tinet, si quid agam scire cupis, omnem meae vitae rationem ah eciem 
Tafano intelliges, quam sordidam ingloriamque, non sine indigna- 
tione, si me ut soles amas, cognosces.' Later on, we may notice the 
same language. Thus (Feb. 5, 151 5), ' Sono diventato inutile a me, 
a' parenti ed agli amici,* and (June 8, 1517) ' Essendomi io ridotto a 
stare in villa per le avs -rsiti che io ho avuto ed ho, sto qualche vr4»^ 
un mese che non mi ricordo di me.' 



IN SOLITUDE. 31,5 

December 10 to his friend Francesco Vettori, he 
says, ' I am at my farm ; and, since my last mis- 
fortunes, have not been in Florence twenty days. 
I rise with the sun, and go into a wood of mine that 
is being cut, where I remain two hours inspecting the 
work of the previous day and conversing with the 
woodcutters, who have always some trouble on hand 
among themselves or with their neighbors. When 
I leave the wood, I proceed to a well, and thence to 
the place which I use for snaring birds, with a book 
under my arm — Dante, or Petrarch, or one of the 
minor poets, like Tibullus or Ovid. I read the story 
of their passions, and let their loves remind me of 
my own, which is a pleasant pastime for a while. 
Next I take the road, enter the inn door, talk with 
the passers-by, inquire the news of the neighborhood, 
listen to a variety of matters, and make note of the 
different tastes and humors of men. This brings me 
to dinner-time, when I join my family and eat the 
poor produce of my farm. After dinner I go back 
to the inn, where I generally find the host and a 
butcher, a miller, and a pair of bakers. With these 
companions I play the fool all day at cards or back- 
gammon : a thousand squabbles, a thousand insults 
and abusive dialogues take place, while we haggle 
over a farthing, and shout loud enough to be heard 
from San Casciano. But when evening falls I go 
home and enter my writing-room. On the thresh- 
old I put off my country habit, filthy with mud and 
mire, and array myself in royal courtly garments; 



3l6 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

thus worthily attired, I make my entrance into the 
ancient courts of the men of old, where they receive 
me with love, and where I feed upon that food which 
only is my own and for which I was born. I feel 
no shame in conversing with them and asking them 
the reason of their actions. They, moved by their 
humanity, make answer; for four hours' space I feel 
no annoyance, forget all care; poverty cannot frighten, 
nor death appall me. I am carried away to their so- 
ciety. And since Dante says ''that there is no science 
unless we retain what we have learned," I have set 
down what I have gained from their discourse, and 
composed a treatise, De Principatibus, in which I 
enter as deeply as I can into the science of the sub- 
ject, with reasonings on the nature of principality, its 
several species, and how they are acquired, how 
maintained, how lost. If you ever liked any of my 
scribblings, this ought to suit your taste. To a prince, 
and especially to a new prince, it ought to prove ac- 
ceptable. Therefore I am dedicating it to the Mag- 
nificence of Giuliano.' 

Further on in the same letter he writes: ' I have 
talked with Filippo Casavecchia about this little work 
of mine, whether I ought to present it or not; and if 
so, whether I ought to send or take it myself to him. 
I was induced to doubt about presenting it at all by 
the fear lest Giuliano should not even read it, and 
that this Ardinghelli should profit by my latest labors. 
On the other hand, I am prompted to present it by 
the necessity which pursues me, seeing that I am con- 



THE 'PRINCIPE: 317 

suming myself in idleness, and I cannot continue long 
in this way without becoming contemptible through 
poverty. I wish these Signori Medici would begin 
to make some use of me, if it were only to set me to 
the work of rolling a stone.^ If I did not win them 
over to me afterwards, I should only complain of 
myself. As for my book, if they read it, they would 
perceive that the fifteen years I have spent in study- 
ing statecraft have not been wasted in sleep or play; 
and everybody ought to be glad to make use of a 
man who has so filled himself with experience at the 
expense of others. About my fidelity they ought 
not to doubt. Having always kept faith, I am not 
going to learn to break it now. A man who has 
been loyal and good for forty-three years, like me, is 
not likely to change his nature; and of my loyalty 
and goodness my poverty is sufficient witness to them/ 
This letter, invaluable to the student of Machia- 
velli's works, is prejudicial to his reputation. It was 
written only ten months after he had been imprisoned 
and tortured by the Medici, just thirteen months after 
the republic he had served so long had been enslaved 
by the princes before whom he was now cringing. It 
is true that Machiavelli was not wealthy; his habits 
of prodigality made his fortune insufficient for his 

• Compare the letter, dated June 10, 1514, to Fr. Vettori: 'Star 
ommi dunque cosi tra i miei cenci, senza trovare uomo che della mia 
servitCl si ricordi, o che creda che io possa esser buono a nulla. Ma 
egli 6 impossibile che io possa star molto cosi, perch^ io mi logoro,' 
etc. Again, Dec. 20, 1514: ' E se la fortuna avesse voluto che i 
Medici, o in cosa di Firenze o di fuora, o in cose loro particolari o In 
pubbliche, mi avessiao una volta comandato, io sarei contento.' 



3l8 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

needs.^ It is true that he could ill bear the enforced 
idleness of country life, after being engaged for fifteen 
years in the most important concerns of the Florentine 
Republic. But neither his poverty, which, after all, 
was but comparative, nor his inactivity, for which he 
found relief in study, justifies the tone of the con- 
clusion to this letter. When we read it, we cannot 
help remembering the language of another exile, who 
while he tells us — 

Come sa di sale 
Lo pane altrui, e com' 6 duro calle 
Lo scendere e 1 salir per 1' altrui scale 

— can yet refuse the advances of his factious city 
thus: *If Florence cannot be entered honorably, I 
will never set foot within her walls. And what? 
Shall I not be able from any angle whatsoever of the 
earth to gaze upon the sun and stars? shall I not be- 
neath whatever region of the heavens have power 
to meditate the sweetest truths, unless I make myself 
ignoble first, nay ignominious, in the face of Florence 
and her people? Nor will bread, I warrant, fail me!' 
If Machiavelli, who in this very letter to Vettori 
quoted Dante, had remembered these words, they 
ought to have fallen like drops of molten lead upon 
his soul. But such was the debasement of the cen- 
tury that probably he would have only shrugged his 
shoulders and sighed, 'Tempora mutantur, nos et 
mutamur in illis.' 

In some respects Dante, Machiavelli, and Michael 

^ See familiar ieiter, Juae lo, 1514. 



MACHIAVELLI A^D DANTE. 31^ 

Angelo Buonarroti may be said to have been the 
three greatest intellects produced by Florence. Dante 
in exile and in opposition, would hold no sort ol 
traffic with her citizens. Michael Angelo, after the 
siege, worked at the Medici tombs for Pope Cle- 
ment, as a makepeace offering for the fortification 
of Samminiato; while Machiavelli entreats to be put 
to roll a stone by these Signori Medici, if only he 
may so escape from poverty and dullness. Michael 
Angelo, we must remember, owed a debt of grati- 
tude as an artist to the Medici for his education in 
the gardens of Lorenzo. Moreover, the quatrain 
which he wrote for his statue of the Night justifies 
us in regarding that chapel as the cenotaph designed 
by him for murdered Liberty. Machiavelli owed 
nothing to the Medici, who had disgraced and tor- 
tured him, and whom he had opposed in all his pub- 
lic action during fifteen years. Yet what was the 
gift with which he came before them as a suppliant, 
crawling to the footstool of their throne ? A treatise 
De Principatibus; in other words, the celebrated 
Principe; which, misread it as Machiavelli's apolo- 
gists may choose to do, or explain it as the rational 
historian is bound to do, yet carries venom in its 
pages. Remembering the circumstances under which 
It was composed, we are in a condition to estimate 
the proud humility and prostrate pride of the dedi- 
cation. \ Niccolo Machiavelli to the Magnificent Lo- 
renzo, son of Piero de' Medici:' so runs the tide. 
'Desiring to present myself to your Magnificence 



320 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

with some proof of my devotion, I have not found 
among my various furniture aught that I prize more 
than the knowledge of the actions of great men ac- 
quired by me through a long experience of modern 
affairs and a continual study of ancient. These 1 
have long and diligently revolved and examined in 
my mind, and have now compressed into a little 
book which I send to your Magnificence. And 
though I judge this work unworthy of your pres- 
ence, yet I am confident that your humanity will 
cause you to value it when you consider that I 
could not make you a greater gift than this of en- 
abling you in a few hours to understand what I 
have learned through perils and discomforts in a 
lengthy course of years.* ' If your Magnificence will 
deign, from the summit of your height, some time 
to turn your eyes to my low place, you will know 
how unjustly I am forced to endure the great and 
continued malice of fortune.' The work so dedi- 
cated was sent in MS. for the Magnificent s private 
perusal. It was not published until 1532, by order 
of Clement VII., after the death of Machiavelli. 

\ I intend to reserve the Prhicipe, considered as 
the supreme expression of Italian political science, 
for a separate study; and after the introduction to 
Macaulay's Essay on Machiavelli, I need hardly enter 
in detail into a discussion of the various theories re- 
specting the intention of this treatise.^ Yet this is 

» Macaulay's essay is, of course, brilliant and comprehensive. I 
do not agree with his theory of the Italian despot, as I hav/e explained 
on p. 127 of this volume. Sometimes, too, he indulges m rhetoric 



PURPOSE OF THE 'PRINCIPE* 3II 

the proper place for explaining my view about Mach- 
iavelll's writings in relation to his biography, and 
for attempting to connect them into such unity as a 
mind so strictly logical as his may have designed. 

With regard to the circumstances under which 
the Prince was composed, enough has been already 
said. Machiavelli's selfish purpose in putting it forth 
seems to my mind apparent. He wanted employ- 
ment: he despaired of the republic: he strove to fur- 
nish the princes in power with a convincing proof of 
his capacity for great affairs. Yet it must not on this 
account be concluded that the Principe was merely a 
cheap bid for office. On the contrary, it contained 
the most mature and the most splendid of Machia- 
velli's thoughts, accumulated through his long years 
of public service; and, strange as it may seem, it em- 
bodied the dream of a philosophical patriot for the 
restitution of liberty to Italy. Florence, indeed, was 
lost. 'These Signori Medici' were in power. But 
could not even they be employed to purge the sa- 
cred soil of Italy from the Barbarians? 

If we can pretend to sound the depths of Machia- 
velli's mind at this distance of time, we may conjec- 

that is merely sentimental, as when he says about the dedication of 
the Florentine History to Clement: ' The miseries and humiliations 
of dependence, the bread which is more bitter than every other food, 
the stairs which are more painful than every other ascent, had not 
broken the spirit of Machiavelli. The most corrupting post in a 
corrupting profession had not depraved the ge7ierous heart of Clem- 
ent.' The sentence I have printed in italics may perhaps tell the 
truth about the Church and Popes in general, out the panegyric of 
Clement is preposterous. Macaulay must have been laughing in his 
sleeve. 



322 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

ture tliat he had . come to believe the free cities too 
corrupt for Independence. The only chance Italy 
had of holding her own against the great powers 
of Europe was by union under a prince. At the 
^>ame time the Utopia of this union, with which he 
closes the Principe, could only be realized by such 
a combination as would either neutralize the power 
of the Church, or else gain the Pope for an ally by 
motives of interest. Now at the period of the dedi- 
cation of the Principe to Lorenzo de' Medici, Leo X. 
was striving to found a principality in the states of 
the Church.i In i5i6 he created his nephew Duke 
of Urbino, and It was thought that this was but a 
prelude to still further greatness. Florence in com 
bination with Rome might do much for Italy. Leo 
meanwhile was still young, and his participation in 
the most ambitious schemes was to be expected. 
Thus the moment was propitious for suggesting to 
Lorenzo that he should put himself at the head of 
an Italian kingdom, which, by its union beneath the 
strong will of a single prince, might suffice to cope 
with nations more potent in numbers and In arms.^ 
The Principe was therefore dedicated In good faith 



' We are, however, bound to remember that Leo was only made 
Pope in March 1513, and that the Principe ^2iS nearly finished in the 
following December. Machiavelli cannot therefore be credited with 
knowing as well as we do now to what length the ambition of the 
Medici was about to run when he composed his work. He wrote in 
tlie hope that it might induce them to employ him. 

« The two long letters to Fr. Vettori (Aug. 26, 1513) and to Piero 
Soderini (no date) should be studied side by side with the Princip* 
for the light they throw on Machiavelll's opinions there expressed. 



ITS POLITICAL SCIENCE. ^2^ 

to the Medici, and the note on which it closes was 
not false. Machiavelli hoped that what Cesare Bor- 
gia had but just failed in accomplishing, Lorenzo de* 
Medici, with the assistance of a younger Pope than 
Alexander, a firmer basis to his princedom in Flor- 
ence, and a grasp upon the states of the Church 
made sure by the policy of Julius II., might effect. 
Whether so good a judge of character as Machiavelli 
expected really much from Lorenzo may be doubted. 
These circumstances make the morality of the 
book the more remarkable. To teach political science 
denuded of commonplace hypocrisies was a worthy 
object. But while seeking to lay bare the springs of 
action, and to separate statecraft from morals, Mach- 
iavelli found himself impelled to recognize a system 
of inverted ethics. The abrupt division of the two 
/ealms, ethical and political, which he attempted, was 
monstrous ; and he ended by substituting inhumanity 
for human nature. Unable to escape the logic which 
links ' morality of some sort with conduct, he gave his 
adhesion to the false code of contemporary practice 
He believed that the right way to attain a result so 
splendid as the liberation of Italy was to proceed by 
force, craft, bad faith, and all the petty arts of a 
political adventurer. The public ethics of his day 
had sunk to this low level. Success by means of 
plain dealing was impossible. The game of state- 
craft could only be carried on by guile and violence. 
Even the clear genius of Machiavelli had been ob- 
scured by the muddy medium of intrigue in which 



J 14 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

he had been working all his life. Even his keen in- 
sight was dazzled by the false splendor of the ad 
venturer Cesare Borgia. 

To have formulated the ethics of the P^'incipe is 
not diabolical. There is no inventive superfluity of 
naughtiness in the treatise. It is simply a handbook 
of princecraft, as that art was commonly received in 
Italy, where the principles of public morality had been 
translated into terms of material aggrandizement, 
glory, gain, and greatness. No one thought of judg- 
ing men by their motives but by their practice ; they 
were not regarded as moral but as political beings, 
responsible, that is to say, to no law but the obliga- 
tion of success. Crimes which we regard as horrible 
were then commended as magnanimous, if it could 
be shown that they were prompted by a firm will 
and had for their object a deliberate end. Mach- 
lavelli and Paolo Giovio, for example, both praise 
the massacre at Sinio^ao^lia as a masterstroke of art, 
without uttering a word in condemnation of its per- 
fidy. Machiavelli sneers at Gianpaolo Baglioni be- 
ca.ise he had not the courage to strangle his guest 
Julius II. and to crown his other crimes with this 
signal act of magnanimity. What virtue had come 
to mean in the Italian language we have seen al- 
ready. The one quality which every one despised 
was simplicity, however this might be combined 
with lofty genius and noble aims. It was because 
Soderini was simple and had a good heart that 
Machiavelli wrote the famous epigram — 



ITALIAN MORALITY. 3J5 

La notte che mori Pier Soderini 

L* alma n' andb dell' inferno alia bocca; 

E Pluto le gridb: Anima sciocca, 

Che inferno ? va nel limbo de' bambini. 

'"The night that Peter Soderini died, 
His soul flew down unto the mouth of hell: 
* What ? Hell for you ? You silly spirit ! ' cried 
The fiend: 'your place is where the babies dwell. 

As of old in Corey ra, so now in Italy, * guilelessness, 
which is the principal ingredient of genuine noble- 
ness, was laughed down, and disappeared.' ^ What 
men feared was not the moral verdict of society, 
pronouncing them degraded by vicious or violent 
acts, but the intellectual estimate of incapacity and 
the stigma of dullness. They were afraid of being 
reckoned among feebler personalities; and to es- 
cape from this contempt, by the commission even 
of atrocities, had come to be accounted manly. The 
truth, missed almost universally, was that the su- 
preme wisdom, the paramount virility, is law-abid- 
ing honesty, the doing of right because right is 
right, in scorn of consequence. Nothing appears 
more clearly in the memoirs of Cellini than this 
point, while the Italian novels are full of matter 
bearing on the same topic. It is therefore ridicu- 
lous to assume that an Italian judged of men or 
conduct in any sense according to our standards. 
Pinturicchio and Perugino thought it no shame to 

• Thuc. HI. 83. The whole of the passage about Corcyra in the 
third book of Thucydides (chs. 82 and 83) applies literally to the moral 
condition of Italy at this period 



326 RENAISSANCE TN ITALY, 

work for princes like the Baglloni and for Popes 
like Alexander VI. Lionardo da Vinci placed his 
talents as an engineer at the service of Cesare Bor- 
gia, and employed his genius as a musician and 
a painter for the amusement of the Milanese Court, 
which must have been, according to Corio's account, 
flagrantly and shamelessly corrupt. Leo Battista Al- 
berti, one of the most charming and the gentlest 
spirits of the earlier Renaissance, in like manner 
lent his architectural ability to the vanity of the. 
iniquitous Sigismondo Malatesta. No : the Prin 
cipe was not inconsistent with the general tone of 
Italian morality; and Machiavelli cannot be fairly 
taxed with the discovery of a new infernal method. 
The conception of politics as a bare art of means 
to ends had grown up in his mind by the study 
of Italian history and social customs. His idealiza- 
tion of Cesare Borgia and his romance of Castruccio 
were the first products of the theory he had formed 
by observation of the world he lived in. The Prin- 
cipe revealed it fully organized. But to have pre- 
sented such an essay in good faith to the despots 
of his native city, at that particular moment in hir 
own career, and under the pressure of trivial dis 
tress, is a real blot upon his memory. 

\We learn from Varchi that Machiavelli was exe- 
crated in Florence for his Principe, the poor think- 
ing it would teach the Medici to take away their 
honor, the rich regarding it as an attack upon their 
wealth, and both discerninij in it a death-blow to 



THEORIES ON THE 'PRINCIPE,' 327 

freedom.^ Machlavelli can scarcely have calculated 
upon this evil opinion, which followed him to the 
grave : for though he showed some hesitation in 
his letter to Vettori about the propriety of present- 
ing the essay to the Medici, this was only grounded 
on the fear lest a rival should get the credit of his 
labors. Again, he uttered no syllable about its being 
intended for a trap to catch the Medici, and commit 
them to unpardonable crimes. We may there- 
fore conclude that this explanation of the purpose 
of the Principe (which, strange to say, has approved 
itself to even recent critics) was promulgated either 
by himself or by his friends, as an after- thought, 
when he saw that the work had missed its mark, 
and at the time when he was trying to suppress 
the MS.2 Bernardo Giunti in the dedication of 
the edition of 1532, and Reginald Pole in i535, 
were, I believe, the first to put forth this fanciful 
theory in print. Machiavelli could not before 1620 
have 'boasted of the patriotic treachery with which 
he was afterwards accredited, so far, at any rate, 
as to lose the confidence of the Medicean family; 
for in that year the Cardinal Giulio de' Medici com- 
missioned him to write the history of Florence. 

> Storia Fior, lib. iv. cap. 15. 

8 See Varchi, loc. cit. The letter written by Machiavelli to Fr. 
Guicciardini from Carpi, May 17, 1521, should be studied in this con- 
nection. It is unfortunately too mutilated to be wholly intelligible. 
After explaining his desire to be of use to Florence, but not after the 
manner most approved of by the Florentines themselves, he says: ' io 
credo che questo sarebbe il vero modo di andare in Paradiso, im- 
parare la via dell' Inferno per fuggirla.' 



328 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

■The Principe ^ after its dedication to Lorenzo, re- 
mained in MS., and Machiavelli was not employed in 
spite of the continual solicitations of his friend Vet- 
tori.i Nothing remained for him but to seek other 
patrons, and to employ his leisure in new literary 
work. Between i5i6 and iSig, therefore, we find 
him taking part in the literary and philosophical dis- 
cussions of the Florentine Academy, which assem- 
bled at that period in the Rucellai Gardens.^ It was 
here that he read his Discourses on the First Decade 
of Livy — a series of profound essays upon the ad- 
ministration of the state, to which the sentences of 
the Roman historian serve as texts. Having set 
forth in the Principe the method of gaining or main- 
taining sovereign power, he shows in the Discorsi 
what institutions are necessary to preserve the body 
politic in a condition of vigorous activity. We may 
therefore regard the Discorsi as in some sense a con- 
tinuation of the Principe, But the wisdom of the 
scientific politician is no longer placed at the disposal 
of a sovereign. He addresses himself to all the mem- 

» The political letters addressed to Francesco Vettori, at Rome, 
and intended probably for the eye of Leo X., were written in 1514. 
The discourse addressed to Leo, sulla riforma dello state di Firenze, 
may be referred perhaps to 1519. 

2 Of these meetings Filippo de' Nerli writes in the Seventh Book 
of his Commentaries, p. 138: ' Avendo convenuto assai tempo nell' 
orto de' Rucellai una certa scuola di giovani letterati e d' elevato in- 
gegno, infra quali praticava continuamente Niccolo Machiavelli (ed 
io ero di Niccolo e di tutti loro amicissimo, e molto spesso con loro 
convsrsavo), s' esercitavano costoro assai, mediante le lettere, nelle 
lezioni dell' istorie, e sopra di esse, ed a loro istanza compose il 
Machiavello quel suo libro de' discorsi sopra Tito Livio, e anco il 
libro di que' trattati e ragionamenti sopra la milizia.' 



* DISCO RSr AND 'ART OF WAR.* 329 

bers of a state who are concerned in its prosperity 
Machiavelli's enemies have therefore been able to in- 
sinuate that, after teaching tyranny in one pamphlet, 
he expounded the principles of opposition to a tyrant 
in the other, shifting his sails as the wind veered.^ 
The truth here also lies in the critical and scientific 
quality of Machiavelli's method. He was content to 
lecture either to princes or to burghers upon politics, 
as an art which he had taken great pains to study, 
while his interest in the demonstration of principles 
rendered him in a measure indifferent to their appli- 
cation.2 In fact, to use the pithy words of Macaulay, 
* the Prince traces the progress of an ambitious man, 
the Discourses the progress of an ambitious people. 
The same principles on which, in the former work, 
the elevation of an individual is explained, are applied 
in the latter to the longer duration and more com- 
plex interest of a society/ 

\ The Seven Books on the Art of War may be re- 
ferred with certainty to the same period of Machia- 
velli's life. They were probably composed in i520. 
If we may venture to connect the works of the his- 
torian's leisure, according to the plan above sug- 
gested, this treatise forms a supplement to the Prin- 
cipe and the Discorsi. Both in his analysis of the 

> See Pitti, ' Apologia de' Cappucci/ Arck. Stor. vol. iv. pt. ii. 
p. 294. 

* The dedication of the Discorsi contains a phrase which recalls 
Machiavelli's words about the Principe. ' Perche in quello io ho 
espresso quanto io so, e quanto io ho imparato per una lunga pratica 
e continua lezione delle cose del mondo.' 



330 RENAJSSA.VCE IN ITALY. 

successful tyrant .and in his description of the power- 
ful commonwealth he had insisted on the prime 
necessity of warfare, conducted by the people and 
their rulers in person. The military organization of 
a great kingdom is here developed in a separate 
Essay, and Machiavelli s favorite scheme for nation- 
alizing the militia of Italy is systematically expounded. 
Giovio's flippant objection, that the philosopher could 
not in practice maneuver a single company, is no 
real criticism on the merit of his theory. 

By this time the Medici had determined to take 
Machiavelli into favor; and since he had expressed a 
wish to be set at least to rolling stones, they found 
for him a trivial piece of work. The Franciscans at 
Carpi had to be requested to organize a separate 
Province of their Order in the Florentine dominion; 
and the conduct of this weighty matter was intrusted 
to the former secretary at the Courts of Maximilian 
and Louis. Several other missions during the last 
years of his life devolved upon Machiavelli; but none 
of them were of much importance: nor, when the 
popular government was instituted in i52 7, had he 
so far regained the confidence of the Florentines as 
to resume his old office of war secretary. This post, 
considering his recent alliance with the Medicean 
party, he could hardly have expected to receive; and 
therefore it is improbable that the news of Gianotti's 
election at all contributed to cause his death.^ Dis- 
appointment he may indeed have felt: for his moral 

» See Varrhi, loc. cit. 



FLORENTINE HISTORY. 33 1 

force had been squandered during fifteen years in the 
attempt to gain the favor of princes who were now 
once more regarded as the enemies of their country. 
When the republic was at last restored, he foimd 
himself in neither camp. The overtures which he 
had made to the Medici had been but coldly re- 
ceived; yet they were sufficiently notorious to bring 
upon him the suspicion of the patriots. He had not 
sincerely acted up to the precept of Polonius: 'This 
above all, — to thine own self be true.' His intellect- 
ual ability, untempered by sufficient political con- 
sistency or moral elevation, had placed him among 
the outcasts: — 

che non furon ribellr, 
N6 fur fedeli a Bio, ma per s^ foro. 

The great achievement of these years was the 
composition of the Istorie Florentine. The commis- 
sion for this work he received from Giulio de' Medici 
through , the Officiali dello Studio in i520, with an 
annual allowance of lOO florins. In i527, the year 
of his death, he dedicated the finished History to 
Pope Clement VII. This masterpiece of literary art, 
though it may be open to the charges of inaccuracy 
and superficiality,! marks an epoch in the develop- 
ment of modern historiography. It must be remem- 
bered that it preceded the great work of Guicciardini 
by some years, and that before the date of its ap- 

» See the criticisms of Ammirato and Romagnosi, quoted by 
CantCi, Letter atur a Italiana, p. 187. 



332 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

pearance the annalists of Italy had been content with 
records of events, personal impressions, and critiques 
of particular periods. Machiavelli was the first to 
contemplate the life of a nation in its continuity, to 
trace the operation of political forces through succes- 
sive generations, to contrast the action of individuals 
with the evolution of causes over which they had but 
little control, and to bring the salient features of the 
national biography into relief by the suppression of 
comparatively unimportant details. By thus applying 
the philosophical method to history, Machiavelli en- 
riched the science of humanity with a new depart- 
ment. There is something in his view of national 
existence beyond the reach of even the profoundest 
of the classical historians. His style is adequate to 
the matter of his work. Never were clear and defi- 
nite thoughts expressed with greater precision in lan- 
guage of more masculine vigor. We are irresistibly 
compelled, while characterizing this style, to think of 
the spare sinews of a trained gladiator. Though 
Machiavelli was a poet, he indulges in no ornaments 
of rhetoric.! His images, rare and carefully chosen, 
seem necessary to the thoughts they illustrate. 
Though a philosopher, he never wanders into spec- 
ulation. Facts and experience are so thoroughly 
compacted with reflection in his mind, that his widest 
creneralizations have the substance of realities. The 
element of unreality, if such there be, is due to a mis- 

« I shall have to speak elsewhere of Machiavelli's comedies, oc- 
casional poems, novel of ' Belphegor,' etc. 



MACHIAVELLI'S END. 333 

conception of human nature. Machiavelli seems to 
have only studied men In masses, or as political in- 
struments, never as feeling and thinking personalities. 
Machiavelli, according to the letter addressed by 
his son Pietro to Francesco Nelli, died of a dose of 
medicine taken at the wrong time. He was attended 
on his deathbed by a friar, who received his confes- 
sion. His private morality was but indifferent. His 
contempt for weakness and simplicity was undisguised. 
His knowledge of the world and men had turned to 
cynicism. The frigid philosophy expressed in his 
political Essays, and the sarcastic speeches in which 
he gave a vent to his soured humors, made him un- 
popular. It was supposed that he had died with 
blasphemy upon his lips, after turning all the sancti- 
ties of human nature into ridicule. Through these 
myths, as through a mist, we may discern the bitter- 
ness of that great, disenchanted, disappointed soul. 
The desert in which spirits of the stamp of Mach- 
iavelli wander is too arid and too aerial for the gross 
substantial bugbears of the vulgar conscience to in- 
habit. Moreover, as Varchi says, ' In his conversa- 
tion Machiavelli was pleasant, serviceable to his 
friends, a friend of virtuous men, and, in a word, 
worthy of having received from nature either less 
i^enius or a better mind/ 



CHAPTER VI. 

*THE prince' of MACHIAVELLL 



The Sincerity of Machiavelli in this Essay — Machiavellism — His de- 
liberate Formulation of a cynical political Theory — Analysis of 
the Prince — Nine Conditions of Principalities — The Interest of the 
Conqueror acknowledged as the sole Motive of his Policy — Cri- 
tique of Louis XII. — Feudal Monarchy and Oriental Despotism — 
Three Ways of subduing a free City — Example of Pisa — Princi- 
palities founded by Adventurers — Moses, Romulus, Cyrus, The- 
seus — Savonarola — Francesco Sforza — Cesare Borgia — Machia- 
velli's personal Relation to him — Machiavelli's Admiration of 
Cesare 's Genius — A Sketch of Cesare's Career — Concerning those 
who have attained to Sovereignty by Crimes — Oliverotto da 
Fermo — The Uses of Cruelty — Messer Ramiro d' Oreo — The pes- 
simistic Morality of Machiavelli — On the Faith of Princes — Alex- 
ander VI. — The Policy of seeming virtuous and honest — Absence 
of chivalrous Feeling in Italy — The MiUtary System of a powerful 
Prince — Criticism of Mercenaries and Auxiliaries — Necessity of 
National Militia — The Art of War — Patriotic Conclusion of the 
Treatise — Machiavelli and Savonarola. 



After what has been already said about the circum- 
stances under which Machiavelli composed the Pri7i- 
cipe, we are justified in regarding it as a sincere 
expression of his political philosophy. The intellect 
of its author was eminently analytical and positive; 
he knew well how to confine himself within the 
strictest limits of the subject he had chosen. In the 
Principe it was not his purpose to write a treatise of 
morality, but to set forth with scientific accuracy the 
arts which he considered necessary to the success of 



PHILOSOPHICAL SINCERITY. 335 

m absolute ruler. We may therefore accept this 
essay as the most profound and lucid exposition of 
the principles by which Italian statesmen were guided 
in the sixteenth century. That Machiavellism existed 
])efore Machiavelli has now become a truism. Gian 
Galeazzo Visconti, Louis XI. of France, Ferdinand 
the Catholic, the Papal Curia, and the Venetian 
Council had systematically pursued the policy laid 
down in the chapters of the Prince. But it is no 
less true that Machiavelli was the first in modern 
times to formulate a theory of government in which 
the interests of the ruler are alone regarded, which 
assumes a separation between statecraft and moral' 
ity, which recognizes force and fraud among the 
legitimate means of attaining high political ends, 
which makes success alone the test of conduct, and 
which presupposes the corruption, venality, and base- 
ness of mankind at large. It was this which aroused 
the animosity of Europe against Machiavelli, as soon 
as the Prince attained wide circulation. Nations ac- 
customed to the Monarchical rather than the Despotic 
form of government resented the systematic exposi- 
tion of an art of tyranny which had long been prac- 
ticed among the Italians. The people of the North, 
whose moral fiber was still vigorous, and who retained 
their respect for established religion, could not toler- 
ate the cynicism with which Machiavelli analyzed his 
subject from the merely intellectual point of view. 
His name became a byword. ' Am I Machiavel ? ' 
says the host in the Merry Wives of Windsor. 



336 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

Marlowe makes the ghost of the great Florentine 
speak prologue to the Jew of Malta thus — 

I count religion but a childish toy, 
And hold there is no sin but ignorance. 

When the Counter- reformation had begun in Italy, 
and desperate efforts were being made to check the 
speculative freedom of the Renaissance, the Principe 
was condemned by the Inquisition. Meanwhile it 
was whispered that the Spanish princes, and the sons 
of Catherine de' Medici upon the throne of France, 
conned its pages just as a manual of toxicology might 
be studied by a Marquise de Brinvilliers. Machia- 
velli became the scapegoat of great political crimes; 
and during the religious wars of the sixteenth cen- 
tury there were not wanting fanatics who ascribed 
such acts of atrocity as the Massacre of S. Bartholo- 
mew to his venomous influence. Yet this book was 
really nothing more or less than a critical compendium 
of facts respecting Italy, a highly condensed abstract 
of political experience. In it as in a mirror we may 
study the lineaments of the Italian despot who by ad- 
venture or by heritage succeeded to the conduct of a 
kingdom. At the same time the political principles 
here established are those which guided the delibera- 
tions of the Venetian Council and the Papal Court, 
no less than the actions of a Sforza or a Borgia upon 
the path to power. It is therefore a document of the 
very highest value for the illustration of the Italian 
conscience in relation to political morality. 



CONQUESTS. 337 

^ The PrtTicipe opens with the statement that all 
forms of government may be classified as republics or 
as principalities. Of the latter some are hereditary, 
others acquired. Of the principalities acquired in the 
lifetime of the ruler some are wholly new, like Milan 
under Francesco Sforza; others are added of heredi- 
tary kingdoms, like Naples to Spain. Again, such 
acquired states have been previously accustomed 
either to the rule of a single man or to self-govern- 
ment. Finally they are won either with the con- 
queror's own or with borrowed armies, either by 
fortune or by ability.^ Thus nine conditions under 
which principalities may be considered are established 
at the outset. 

The short chapter devoted by Machiavelli to he- 
reditary principalities may be passed over as compara- 
tively unimportant. It is characteristic of Italian pol- 
itics that the only instance he adduces of this form of 
government in Italy is the Duchy of Ferrara. States 
and cities were so frequently shifting owners in the 
sixteenth century that the scientific politician was justi- 
fied in confining his attention to the method of estab- 
lishing and preserving principalities acquired by force. 
When he passes to the consideration of this class, 
Machiavelli enters upon the real subject of his essay. 
The first instance he discusses is that of a prince who 

» The word Virtil, which I have translated ability, is almost 
equivalent to the Greek dpBxrj before it had received a moral de- 
finition, or to the Roman Virtus. It is very far, as will be gath- 
ered from the sequel of the Principe, from denoting what we mean 
by Virtue. 



338 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

has conquered a dominion which he wishes to unite 
as firmly as possible to his hereditary states. The 
new territory may either belong to the same nation- 
ality and language as the old possession, or may not 
In the former case it will be enough to extinguish the 
whole line of the ancient rulers, and to take care that 
neither the laws nor the imposts of the province be 
materially altered. It will then in course of time 
become by natural coalition part of the old king- 
dom. But if the acquired dominion be separate 
in language, customs, and traditions from the old, 
then arises a real difficulty for the conqueror. In 
order to consolidate his empire and to accustom 
his new subjects to his rule, Machiavelli recom- 
mends that he should either take up his residence 
in the subjugated province, or else plant colonies 
throughout it, but that he should by no means trust 
merely to garrisons. ' Colonies,' he remarks, ' are 
not costly to the prince, are more faithful, and 
cause less offense to the subject states; those whom 
they may injure, being poor and scattered, are pre- 
vented from doing mischief. For it should be ob- 
served that men ought either to be caressed or 
trampled out, seeing that small injuries may be 
avenged, whereas great ones destroy the possibility 
of retaliation; and so the damage that has to be 
inflicted ought to be such that it need involve no 
fear of vengeance.' I quote this passage as a spec- 
imen of Machiavelli's direct and scientific handling 
of the most inhuman necessities of statecraft, as 



POLICY OF LOUIS Xll. ^^^ 

conceived by him.> He uses no hypocritical pallia- 
tion to disguise the egotism of the conqueror. He 
does not even pretend to take into consideration 
any interests but those of the ambitious prince 
He treats humanity as though it were the marble 
out of which the political artist should hew the 
orm that pleased his fancy best. He calculates 
the exact amount of oppression which will render 
a nation incapable of resistance, and relieve the 
conqueror of trouble in his work of building up a 
puissant kingdom for his own aggrandizement. 

What Machiavelli says about mixed principali- 
ties :s pointed by a searching critique of the Italian 
jpohcy o Louis XII. The French king had well- 
known claims upon the Duchy of Milan, which the 
Venetians urged him to make good. They pro- 
posed to unite forces and to divide the conquered 
province of Lombardy. Machiavelli does not blame 
Louis for accepting this offer and acting in concert 
with the Republic. His mistakes began the mo- 
ment after he had gained possession of Milan, Ge- 
noa, and the majority of the North Italian cities. It 
was then his true policy to balance Venice against 
Rome, to assume the protectorate of the minor 
a tes. and to keep all dangerous rivals out of 

mto the hands of the Pope and divided Naples 

mies and inhuminitip, mi. \^' ""^ "P' ^^' °" '^e infa- 
demned. """'""""'^^ '° "'•"■' 't"^ aspirant after tyranny is con- 



340 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

with the King of Spain. ' Louis indeed/ concludes 
Machiavelli, ' was guilty of five capital errors : \he 
destroyed the hopes of his numerous and weak 
allies; he increased the power, already too great, 
of the Papacy; he introduced a foreign potentate; 
he neglected to reside in Italy; he founded no col- 
onies for the maintenance of his authority. If I 
am told that Louis acted thus imprudendy toward 
Alexander and Ferdinand in order to avoid a war, 
I answer that in each case the mistake was as bad 
as any war could be in its results. If I am reminded 
of his promise to the Pope, I reply that princes ought 
to know how and when to break their faith, as I 
intend to prove. When I was at Nantes, the Car- 
dinal of Rouen told me that the Italians did not 
know how to conduct a war: I retorted that the 
French did not understand statecraft, or they would 
not have allowed the Church to gain so much power 
in Italy. Experience showed that I was right; for 
the French wrought their own ruin by aggrandiz- 
ing the Papacy and introducing Spain into the realm 
of Naples.' 

\ This criticism contains the very essence of politi- 
cal sagacity. It lays bare the secret of the failure 
of the French under Charles, under Louis, and under 
Francis, to establish themselves in Italy. Expedi- 
tions of parade, however brilliant, temporary con- 
quests, cross alliances, and bloody victories do not 
consolidate a kingdom. They upset states and cause 
misery to nations: but dicir effects pass and leave 



MONARCHIES AND DESPOTISMS. 341 

the so-called conquerors worse off than they were 
before. It was the doom of Italy to be ravaged 
by these inconsequent marauders, who never at- 
tempted by internal organization to found a sub- 
stantial empire, until the mortmain of the Spanish 
rule was laid upon the peninsula, and Austria gained 
by marriages what France had failed to win by force 
of arms. 

The fourth chapter of the Principe is devoted 
to a parallel between Monarchies and Despotisms 
which is chiefly interesting as showing that Mach- 
iavelli appreciated the stability of kingdoms based 
upon feudal foundations. France is chosen as the 
best trxample of the one and Turkey of the other. 
^^The whole empire of the Turk is governed by one 
Lord; the others are his servants; he divides his 
kingdom into satrapies, to which he appoints dif- 
ferent administrators, whom he changes about at 
pleasure. But the King of France is placed in the 
center of a time-honored company of lords, acknowl- 
edged as such by their subjects and loved by them; 
they have their own prerogatives, nor can the king 
deprive them of these without peril.* Hence it fol- 
lows that the prince who has once dispossessed a 
despot finds ready to his hand a machinery of gov- 
ernment and a band of subservient ministers; while 
he who may dethrone a monarch has immediately 
to cope with a multitude of independent rulers, too 
numerous to extinguish and too proud to conciliate. 
\ Machiavelli now proceeds to discuss the best 



34 2 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

method of subjugating free cities which have been 
acquired by a prince. There are three ways of 
doing it, he says. 'The first is to destroy them 
utterly; the second, to rule them in your own per- 
son; the third, to leave them their constitution under 
the conduct of an oligarchy chosen by yourself, and 
to be content with tribute. But, to speak the truth, 
the only safe way is to ruin them.' This sounds 
very much like the advice which an old spider might 
give to a young one: When you have caught a big 
fly, suck him at once; suck out at any rate so much 
of his blood as may make him powerless to break 
your web, and feed on him afterwards at^ leisure. 
Then he goes on to give his reasons. * He who 
becomes the master of a city used to liberty, and 
does not destroy it, should be prepared to be undone 
by it himself, because that name of Liberty, those an- 
cient usages of Freedom, which no length of years 
and no benefits can extinguish in the nation s mind, 
which cannot be uprooted by any forethought or 
by any pains, unless the citizens themselves be 
broken or dispersed, will always be a rallying-point 
for revolution when an opportunity occurs.' This 
terrific moral — through which, let it be said in jus- 
tice to Machiavelli, the enthusiasm of a patriot tran- 
spires — is pointed by the example of Pisa, 'gisa, 
held for a century beneath the heel of Florence — 
her ports shut up, her fields abandoned to marsh 
fever, her civic life extino^ulshed, her arts and sci- 
ences crushed out — had yet not been utterly ruined 



TREATMENT OF FREE STATES. 343 

fn the true sense of depopulation or dismemberment. 
Therefore when Charles VIII. in 1494 entered Pisa, 
and Orlandl, the orator, caught him by the royal 
mantle, and besought him to restore her liberty, 
that word, the only word the crowd could catch 
in his petition, inflamed a nation: the lions and 
lilies of Florence were erased from the public build- 
ings; the Marzocco was dashed from its column on 
the quay into the Arno; and in a moment the dead 
republic awoke to life. Therefore, argues Machia- 
velli, so tenacious is the vitality of a free state that 
a prudent conqueror will extinguish it entirely or 
will rule it in person with a rod of iron. This, be 
it remembered, is the advice of Machiavelli, the 
Florentine patriot, to Lorenzo de* Medici, the Flor- 
entine tyrant, who has recently resumed his seat 
upon the neck of that irrepressible republic. 

Hitherto we have been considering how the state 
acquired by a conqueror should be incorporated with 
his previous dominions. The next section of Mach- 
iavelli's discourse is by far the most interesting. It 
treats of principalities created by the arms, personal 
qualities, and good fortune of adventurers. Italy 
alone in the sixteenth century furnished examples 
of these tyrannies: consequently that portion of the 
Principe which is concerned with them has a spe- 
cial interest for students of the Renaissance. Mach- 
iavelli begins with the founders of kingdoms who 
have owed but little to fortune and have depended 
on their own forces. The list he furnishes, when 



344 PFNAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

tested by modern notions of history, is to say the 
least a curious one. It contains Moses, Cyrus, Rom- 
ulus, and Theseus. Having mentioned Moses first, 
Machiavelli proceeds to explain that, though we have 
to regard him as the mere instrument of God's pur- 
pose, yet the principles on which the other found- 
ers acted were * not different from those which Moses 
derived from so supreme a teacher.' What these 
men severally owed to fortune was but the occa- 
sion for the display of the greatness that was in 
them. Moses found the people of Israel enslaved 
in Egypt. Romulus was an exile from Alba. Cy- 
rus had to deal with the Persian people tired of 
the empire of effeminate Medes. Theseus under- 
took to unite the scattered elements of the Athe- 
nian nation. Thus each of these founders had an 
opening provided for him, by making use of which 
he was able to bring his illustrious qualities into 
play. The achievement in each case was after- 
wards due solely to his own ability, and the con- 
quest which he made with difficulty was preserved 
with ease. This exordium is not without practical 
importance, as will be seen when we reach the ap- 
plication of the whole argument to the house of 
Medici at the conclusion of the treatise. The in- 
itial obstacles which an innovator has to overcome, 
meanwhile, are enormous. * He has for passionate 
foes all such as flourish under the old order, for 
friends those who might flourish under the new; 
but these are lukewarm, j>cirt]\' from fear of their 



FOUNDERS OF STATES. 345 

Opponents, on whose side are established law and 
right, partly from the incredulity which prevents 
men from putting faith in what is novel and un- 
tried.* It therefore becomes a matter of necessity 
that the innovator should be backed up with force, 
that he should be in a position to command and 
not obliged to sue for aid. This is the reason why 
all the prophets who have used arms to enforce 
their revelations have succeeded, and why those 
who have only trusted to their personal ascendency 
have failed. Moses, of course, is an illustrious ex- 
ample of the successful prophet. Savonarola is ad- 
duced as a notable instance of a reformer * who was 
ruined in his work of innovation as soon as the 
multitude lost their faith in him, since he had no 
means of keeping those who had believed firm, or 
of compelling faith from disbelievers.' In this cri- 
tique Machiavelli remains true to his positive and 
scientific philosophy of human nature. He will not 
allow that there are other permanent agencies in 
the world than the calculating ability of resolute 
men and the might derived from physical forces. 

s Among the eminent examples of Italian founders 
who rose to princely power by their own ability or by 
availing themselves of the advantages which fortune 
put within their reach, Machiavelli selects Francesco 
Sforza and Cesare Borgia. The former is a notable 
instance of success achieved by pure virtic : * Fran- 
cesco, by using the right means, and by his own sing- 
ular ability, raised himself from the rank of a private 



34* RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

man to the Duchy of Milan, and maintained with 
ease the mastery he had acquired with Infinite pains.' 
Cesar e, on the other hand, Illustrates both the strength 
and the weakness oi fortuna : ' he acquired his do 
minion by the aid derived from his father's position, 
and when he lost that he also lost his power, notwith- 
standing that he used every endeavor and did all 
that a prudent and able man ought to do In order 
to plant himself firmly In those states which the arms 
and fortune of others had placed at his disposal.' It 
is not necessary to dwell upon the career of Fran- 
cesco Sforza. Not he but Cesare Borgia Is Mach- 
iavelli's hero in this treatise, the example from which 
he deduces lessons both of Imitation and avoidance 
for the benefit of Lorenzo de' Medici. Lorenzo, it 
must be remembered, like Cesare, would have the 
fortunes of the Church to start with in that career of 
ambition to which Machlavelll Incites him. Unlike 
Francesco Sforza, he was no mere soldier of advent- 
ure, but a prince, born In the purple, and bound to 
make use of those undefined advantages which he 
derived from his position in Florence and from the 
countenance of his uncle, the Pope. The Duke Val- 
entino, therefore, who Is at one and the same 
time MachiavelH's ideal of prudence and courage in 
the conduct of affairs, and also his chief instance of 
the instability of fortune, supplies the philosopher 
with all he needed for the guidance of his princely 
pupil. With the Duke Valentino Machlavelll had 
conversed on terms of nrivate intimacy, and there 



CESARE BORGIA. 347 

is no doubt that his imagination had been dazzled by 
the brilliant intellectual abilities of this consummate 
rogue. Dispatched in i5o2 by the Florentine Re- 
public to watch the operations of Cesare at Imola, 
with secret instructions to offer the Duke false prom- 
ises in the hope of eliciting information that could be 
relied upon, Machiavelli had enjoyed the rare pleasure 
of a game at political ecarte with the subtlest and 
most unscrupulous diplomatist of his age. He had 
witnessed his terrible yet beneficial administration of 
Romagna. He had been present at his murder of 
the chiefs of the Orsini faction at Sinigaglia. Cesare 
had confided to him, or had pretended to confide, his 
schemes of personal ambition, as well as the motives 
and the measures of his secret policy. On the day 
of the election of Pope Julius II. he had laid bare the 
whole of his past history before the Florentine secre- 
tary, and had pointed out the single weakness of 
which he felt himself to have been guilty. In these 
trials- of skill and this exchange of confidence it is 
impossible to say which of the two gamesters may 
have been the more deceived. But Machiavelli felt 
that the Borgia supplied him with a perfect specimen 
for the study of the arts of statecraft; and so deep 
was the impression produced upon his mind, that 
even after the utter failure of Cesare's designs he 
made him the hero of the political romance before us. 
His artistic perception of the perfect and the beau- 
tiful, both in unscrupulous conduct and in frigid cal- 
culation of conflicting interests, was satisfied by the 



348 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

Steady selfishness, the persistent perfidy, the profound 
mistrust of men, the self-command in the execution 
of perilous designs, the moderate and deliberate em- 
ployment of cruelty for definite ends, which he ob- 
served in the young Duke, and which he has ideal- 
ized in his own Principe, That nature, as of a 
salamander adapted to its element of fire, as of * a 
resolute angel that delights in flame/ to which noth- 
ing was sacred, which nothing could daunt, which 
never for a moment sacrificed reason to passion, 
which was incapable of weakness or fatigue, had fasci- 
nated Machiavelli's fancy. The moral qualities of the 
man, the base foundations upon which he raised his 
power, the unutterable scandals of his private life, 
and the hatred of all Christendom were as nothing 
in the balance. Such considerations had, according 
to the conditions of his subject, to be eliminated be- 
fore he weighed the intellectual qualities of the ad- 
venturer. * If all the achievements of the Duke are 
considered ' — it is Machiavelli speaking — * it will be 
found that he built up a great substructure for his 
future power ; nor do I know what precepts I could 
furnish to a prince in his commencement better than 
such as are to be derived from his example.' It 
is thus that Machiavelli, the citizen, addresses Lo- 
renzo, the tyrant of Florence. He says to him : Go 
thou and do likewise. And what, then, is this 
likewise ? 

Cesare, being a Pope's son, had nothing to look 
to but the influence of his father. At first he de- 



RISE OF CESARE BORGIA, 349 

Signed to use this influence in the Church; but after 
murdering his elder brother, he threw aside the 
Cardinal's scarlet and proclaimed himself a political 
aspirant. His father could not make him lord of any 
state, unless it were a portion of the territory of the 
Church: and though, by creating, as he did, twelve 
Cardinals in one day, he got the Sacred College to 
sanction his investiture of the Duchy of Romagna, 
yet both Venice and Milan were opposed to this 
scheme. Again there was a difficulty to be encoun- 
tered in the great baronial houses of Orsini and 
Colonna, who at that time headed all the mercenary 
troops of Italy, and who, as Roman nobles, had a 
natural hatred for the Pope. It was necessary to use 
their aid in the acquisition of Cesare s principality. 
It was no less needful to humor their animosity. 
Under these circumstances Alexander thought it 
best to invite the French king into Italy, bargaining 
with Louis that he would dissolve his marriage in 
return for protection awarded to Cesare. The Co- 
lonna faction meanwhile was to be crushed, and the 
Orsini to be flattered. Cesare, by the help of his 
French allies and the Orsini captains, took possession 
of Imola and Faenza, and thence proceeded to over- 
run Romagna. In this enterprise he succeeded to 
the full. Romagna had been, from the earliest 
period of Italian history, a nest of petty tyrants 
who governed badly and who kept no peace in their 
dominions. Therefore the towns were but languid 
in their opposition to Cesare, and were soon more 



350 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

than contented with a conqueror who introduced a 
good system for the administration of justice. But 
now tw^o difficulties arose. The subjugation of Ro- 
magna had been effected by the help of the French 
and the Orsini. Cesare as yet had formed no militia 
of his own, and his allies were becoming suspicious. 
The Orsini had shown some slackness at Faenza; 
and when Cesare proceeded to make himself master 
of Urbino, and to place a foot in Tuscany by the 
capture of Piombino — which conquests he completed 
during i5oo and i5oi — Louis began to be jealous 
of him. The problem for the Duke was how to dis- 
embarrass himself of the two forces by which he had 
acquired a solid basis for his future principality. His 
first move was to buy over the Cardinal d'Amboise. 
whose influence in the French Court was supreme 
and thus to keep his credit for awhile afloat witK 
Louis. His second was to neutralize the power of 
the Orsini, partly by pitting them against the Colon- 
nesi, and partly by superseding them in their com- 
mand as captains. For the latter purpose he became 
his own Condottiere, drawing to his standard by the 
lure of splendid pay all the minor gentry of the Ro- 
man Campagna. Thus he collected his own forces, 
and was able to dispense with the unsafe aid of mer- 
cenary troops. At this point of his career the Orsini, 
finding him established in Romagna, in Urbino, and 
in part of Tuscany, while their own strength was on 
the decline, determined if possible to check the career 
of this formidable tyrant by assassination. The con- 



ADVANCE OF CESARE. 35 1 

spiracy known as the ' Diet of La Magione ' was the 
consequence. In this conjuration the Cardinal Orsini, 
Paolo Orsini, his brother and head of the great house, 
together with Vitellozzo Vitelli, lord of Citta di Cas- 
tello, the Baglione of Perugia, the Bentivoglio of 
Bologna, Antonio da Venasso from Siena, and 
Oliverotto da Fermo took each a part. The result 
of their machinations against the common foe was 
that Cesare for a moment lost Urbino, and was 
nearly unseated in Romagna. But the French 
helped him, and he stood firm. Still it was impossi- 
ble to believe that Louis XIL would suffer him to 
advance unchecked in his career of conquest; and as 
lonof as he continued between the French and the Or- 
sini his position was of necessity insecure. The for- 
mer had to be cast off; the latter to be extirpated; and 
yet he had not force enough to play an open game. 
^;He therefore,' says Machiavelli, * turned to craft, and 
displayed such skill in dissimulation that the Orsini 
through the mediation of Paolo became his friends 
again.' The cruelty of Cesare Borgia was only 
equalled by his craft; and it was by a supreme exer- 
cise of his power of fascination that he lured the foes 
who had plotted against him at La Magione into his 
snare at Sinigaglia. Paolo Orsini, Francesco Orsini, 
duke of Gravina, Vitellozzo Vitelli, and Oliverotto da 
Fermo were all men of arms, accustomed to intrigue 
and to bloodshed, and more than one of them were 
stained with crimes of the most atrocious treachery, 
yet such were the arts of Cesare Borgia that in i5o2 



35* RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

he managed to assemble them, apart from their 
troops, in the castle of Sinigaglia, where he had them 
strangled. Having now destroyed the chiefs of the 
opposition and enlisted their forces in his own service, 
Cesare, to use the phrase of Machiavelli, 'had laid 
good foundations for his future power.' He com- 
manded a sufficient territory; he wielded the tem- 
poral and spiritual power of his father; he was feared 
by the princes and respected by the people through- 
out Italy; his cruelty and perfidy and subtlety and 
boldness caused him to be universally admired. But 
as yet he had only laid foundations. The empire of 
Italy was still to win; for he aspired to nothing else, 
and it is even probable that he entertained a notion 
of secularizing the Papacy. France was the chief 
obstacle to his ambition. The alarm of Louis had at 
last been roused. But Louis' own mistake in bring- 
ing the Spaniards into Naples afforded Cesare the 
means of shaking off the French control. He es- 
poused the cause of Spain, and by intriguing now 
with the one power and now with the other made 
himself both formidable and desirable to each. His 
geographical position between Milan and Naples en- 
forced this policy. Another difficulty against which 
he had to provide was in the future rather than the 
present. Should his father die, and a new Pope ad- 
verse to his interests be elected, he might lose not 
only the support of the Holy See, but also his fiefs 
of Romagna and Urbino. To meet this contingency 
he took four precautions, mentioned with great ad- 



CESARE AND THE PAPACY. 353 

miration by Machiavelli. In the first place he sys- 
tematically murdered the heirs of the ruling families 
of all the cities he acquired — as for example three 
Varani at Camerino, two Manfredi at Faenza, the 
Orsini and Vitelli at Sinigaglia, and others whom it 
v\^ould be tedious to mention. By this process he left 
no scion of the ancient houses for a future Pope to 
restore In the second place he attached to his per- 
son b\ pensions, offices, and emoluments, all the 
Roman gentry, so that he might be able to keep 
the new Pope a prisoner and unarmed in Rome. 
Thirdly, he reduced the College of Cardinals, by 
bribery, terrorism, poisoning, and packed elections, 
to such a state that he could count on the creation of 
a Pope, if not his nominee, at least not hostile to 
his interests. Fourthly, he lost no time, but pushed 
his plans of conquest on with utmost speed, s( as, 
if possible, to command a large territory at the time 
of Alexander's death. Machiavelli, who records 
these four points with approbation, adds : 'He there- 
fore, who finds it needful in his new authority to se- 
cure himself against foes, to acquire allies, to gain a 
point by force or fraud, etc., etc., could not discover 
an ensample more vigorous and blooming than that 
of Cesare.' Such is the panegyric which Machiavelli, 
writing, as it seems to me, in all good faith and inno- 
cence, records of a man who, taken altogether, is per- 
haps the most selfish, perfidious, and murderous of 
adventurers on record. The only fault for which he 
blames him is that he did not prevent the election of 



354 /RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

Pope Julius II. by concentrating his Influence on 
either the Cardinal d'AmboIse or a Spaniard. 

It is curious to read the title of the chapter fol- 
lowing that which criticises the action of Cesare 
Borgia: it runs thus, 'Concerning those who have 
attained to sovereignty by crimes.' Cesare was 
clearly not one of these men In the eyes of Mach- 
iavelll, who confines his attention to Agathocles of 
Syracuse, and to Oliverotto da Fermo, a brigand 
who acquired the lordship of Fermo by murder- 
ing his uncle and benefactor, Giovanni FoglianI, 
and all the chief men of the city at a banquet to 
which he had invited them. This atrocity, accord- 
ing to Machlavelli's creed, would have been justi- 
fied, if Oiiverotto had combined cruelty and subtlety 
in proper proportions. But his savagery was not 
suf^ciently veiled; a prince should never Incur odi- 
um by crimes of violence, but only use them as 
the means of inspiring terror. Besides, Oliverotto 
was so simple as to fall at last Into the snare of 
Cesare Borgia at SInlgaglla. Cesare himself sup- 
plies Machiavelll with a notable example of the 
way in which cruelty can be well used. Having 
found the cities of Romagna in great disorder, 
Cesare determined to quell them by the ferocity 
of a terrible governor. For this purpose he chose 
Mcsser Ramiro d' Oreo, ' a man cruel and quick 
of action, to whom he gave the fullest power.' A 
story is told of Messer Ramiro which illustrates his 
temper in a very bizarre fashion: he one day kicked 



MACHIAVELLrS IDEAL. 355 

a clumsy page on to the fire, and held him there with 
a poker till he was burned up. Acting after this 
fashion, with plenipotentiary authority, Ramiro soon 
froze the whole province into comparative tranquillity. 
But it did not suit Cesare to incur the odium which 
the man's cruelty brought on his administration. Ac • 
cordingly he had him decapitated one night and ex- 
posed to public view, together with the block and 
bloody hatchet, in the square at Cesena. Of the 
art with which Cesare first reduced Romagna to 
order by the cruelty of his agent, and then avoided 
the odium of this cruelty by using the wretched 
creature as an appalling example of his justice and 
his power, Machiavelli wholly approves. His theory 
is that cruelty should be employed for certain definite 
purposes, but that the Prince should endeavor to 
shun as far as possible the hatred it inspires. In 
justice both to Machiavelli and to Cesare, it should 
be said that the administration of Romagna was far 
better under the Borgia rule than it had ever been 
before. The exhibition of savage violence of which 
Machiavelli approves was perhaps needed to cow so 
brutalized a population. 

\In those chapters which Machiavelli has devoted 
to the exposition of the qualities that befit a Prince, 
it is clear that Cesare Borgia was not unfrequently 
■before his eyes.^ The worst thing that can be said 



> )n a letter to Fr. Vettori (Jan. 31, 1514) he says: 'II duca Val- 
entino, r opere del quale io imiterei sempre quando fossi principe 



356 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

about Italy of the sixteenth century is that such an 
analyst as Machiavelli should have been able to 
idealize an adventurer whose egotistic immorality 
was so undisguised. The ethics of this profound 
anatomist of human motives were based upon a 
conviction that men are altogether bad. When dis- 
cussing the question whether it be better to be 
loved or feared, Machiavelli decides that * it is far 
safer to be feared than loved, if you must choose; 
seeing that you may say of men generally that 
they are ungrateful and changeable, dissemblers, 
apt to shun danger, eager for gain; as long as you 
serve them, they offer you everything, down to 
their very children, if you have no need; but when 
you want help, they fail you. Therefore it is best 
to put no faith in their pretended love.' This is 
language which could only be used in a country 
where loyalty was unknown and where all political 
and social combinations were founded upon force or 
convenience. Princes must, however, be cautious 
not to injure their subjects in their honor or their 
property — especially the latter, since men 'forget 
the murder of their fathers quicker than the loss 
of their money.' Under another heading Machia- 
velli returns to the same topic, and lays it down 
as an axiom that, since the large majority of men 
are bad, a prince must learn in self-defense how to 
be bad, and must use this science when and where 
he deems appropriate, endeavoring, however, under 
all circumstances to pass for good. 



THE FAITH OF PRINCES, 357 

\ He brings the same desperate philosophy jf life, 
the same bitter experience of mankind, to bear upon 
his discussion of the faith of princes. The chapter 
which is entitled ' How princes ought to keep their 
word' is one of the most brilliantly composed and 
thoroughly Machiavellian of the whole treatise. He 
starts with the assertion that to fight the battles of 
life in accordance with law is human, to depend on 
force is brutal; yet when the former method is in- 
sufficient, the latter must be adopted. A prince 
should know how to combine the natures of the man 
and of the beast; and this is the meaning of the 
mythus of Cheiron, who was made the tutor of 
Achilles. He should strive to acquire the qualities 
of the fox and of the lion, in order that he may both 
avoid snares and guard himself from wolves. A pru- 
dent prince cannot and must not keep faith, when it 
is harmful to do so, or when the occasion under which 
he promised has passed by. He will always find 
colorable pretexts for breaking his word ; and if he 
learns well how to feign, he will have but little diffi- 
culty in deceiving people. Among the innumerable 
instances of successful hypocrites Machiavelli can 
think of none more excellent than Alexander VI . 
^He never did anything else but deceive men, nor 
eVer thought of anything but this, and always found 
apt matter for his practice. Never was there a man 
who had greater force in swearing and tying himself 
down to his engagements, or who observed them 
less. Nevertheless his wiles were always successful 



358 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

in the way he wished, because he well knew that 
side of the world.' It is curious that Machiavelli 
should have forgotten that the whole elaborate life's 
policy of Alexander and his son was ruined precisely 
by their falling into one of their own traps, and that 
the mistake or treason of a servant upset the calcula- 
tions of the two most masterly deceivers of their age.^ 
Following out the same line of thought, which im- 
plies that in a bad world a prince cannot afford to be 
good, Machiavelli asserts : ' It is not necessary that a 
prince should be merciful, loyal, humane, religious, 
just: nay, I will venture to say, that if he had all 
these qualities and always used them, they would 
harm him. But he must seem to have them, es- 
pecially if he be new in his principality, where he will 
find it quite impossible to exercise these virtues, 
since in order to maintain his power he will be often 
obliged to act contrary to humanity, charity, religion.' 
Machiavelli does not advise him to become bad for 
the sake of badness, but to know when to quit the 
path of virtue for the preservation of his kingdom* 
''He must take care to say nothing that is not full of 
these five qualities, and must always appear all mercy, 
all loyalty, all humanity, all justice, all religion, es- 
pecially the last' On the advantage of a reputation 
for piety Machiavelli insists most strongly. He 
points out how Ferdinand the Catholic used the pre- 
text of religious zeal in order to achieve the conquest 

' Perhaps this is an indirect argument aeainst the legend of their 
deatl 



KING ARTHUR'S KNIGHTS, 359 

of Granada, to invade Africa, to expel the Moors, 
and how his perfidies in Italy, his perjuries to France, 
were colored with a sanctimonious decency. 

r. After reading these passages we feel that thougn 
it may be true that Machiavelli only spoke with scien- 
tific candor of the vices which were common to all 
statesmen in his age — though the Italians were so 
corrupt that it seemed hopeless to deal fairly with 
them — yet there was a radical taint in the soul of the 
man who could have the heart to cull these poison- 
ous herbs of policy and distill their juices to a quin- 
tessence for the use of the prince to whom he was 
confiding the destinies of Italy .^ Almost involuntarily 
we remember the oath which Arthur administered to 
his knights, when he bade them ' never to do outrage 
nor murder, and always to flee treason; also by no 
means to be cruel, but to give mercy unto him that 
asked mercy, upon pain of forfeiture of their worship 
and lordship of King Arthur for evermore/ In a land 
where chivalry like this had ever taken root, either 
as an ideal or as an institution, the chapters of Mach- 
iavelli could scarcely have been published. The 
Italians lacked the virtues of knighthood. It ^vas 
possible among them for the philosophers to teacii 
the princes that success purchased at the expense ot 
honor, loyalty, humanity, and truth might be illustrious. 
It is refreshing to turn from those chapters in 

> In the Discorst, lib. i. cap. 55, he calls Italy 'la coruttela del 
mondo,' and judges that her case is desperate; ' non si puo sperare 
nelle provincie che in questi tempi si veggono corrotte, come ft 1' 
Italia sopra tutte le altre ' 



360 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

whk:h Machiavelll • teaches the Prince how to cope 
with the world by using the vices of the wicked, to 
his exposition of the military organization suited to 
the maintenance of a great kingdom. Machiavelli 
has no mean or humble ambition for his Prince : 
^double will his glory be, who has founded a new 
realm, and fortified and adorned it with good laws, 
good arms, good friends, and good ensamples.* 
What the enterprise to which he fain would rouse 
Lorenzo really is, will appear in the conclusion. 
Meanwhile he encourages him by the example of 
Ferdinand the Catholic to gird his loins up for great 
enterprises. He bids him be circumspect in his 
choice of secretaries, seeing that 'the first opinion 
formed of a prince and of his capacity is derived 
from the men whom he has gathere-d round him.' 
He points out how he should shun flattery and seek 
respectful but sincere advice. Finally he reminds him 
that a prince is impotent unless he can command 
obedience by his arms. Fortresses are a doubtful 
source of strength; against foreign foes they are 
worse than useless; against subjects they are worth- 
less in comparison with the goodwill of the people: 
\ the best fortress possible is to escape the hatred 
of your subjects.' Everything therefore depends 
upon the well-ordering of a national militia. The 
neglect of that ruined the princes of Italy and enabled 
Charles VI 1 1, to conquer the fairest of European king- 
doms with wooden spurs and a piece of chalk.* 

» The references in this parap'-aph are made to chapters xx.-xxiv- 
nwiX chapter xii. 'W the Princ 



MERCENARIES, 361 

In his discourse on armies Machiavelli lays It 
down that the troops with which a prince defends 
his state are either his own, or mercenaries, or aux- 
iliaries, or mixed. * Mercenary and auxiliary forces 
, are both useless and perilous, and he who founds 
the security of his dominion on the former will never 
be established firmly: seeing that they are disunited, 
ambitious, and undisciplined, without loyalty, trucu- 
lent to their friends, cowardly among foes; they have 
no fear of God, no faith with men; you are only safe 
with them before they are attacked; in peace they 
plunder you; in war you are the prey of your ene- 
mies. The cause of this is that they have no other 
love nor other reason to keep the field, beyond a 
little pay, which is far from sufficient to make them 
wish to die for you. They are willing enough to be 
your soldiers so long as you are at peace, but when 
war comes their impulse is to fly or sneak away. 
It ought to be easy to establish the truth of this as- 
sertion, since the ruin of Italy is due to nothing else 
except this, that we have now for many years de- 
pended upon mercenary arms.'^ Here he touches 
the real weakness of the Italian states. Then he 
proceeds to explain further the rottenness of the 
Condottiere system. Captains of adventure are either 
men of ability or not. If they are, you have to fear 
lest their ambition prompt them to turn their arms 
against yourself or your allies. This happened to 
Queen Joan of Naples, who was deserted by Sforza 

» See chapter xii. of the Principe, 



$6» RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

Attendolo in her sorest need; to the Milanes':, when 
Francesco Sforza made himself their despot; to the 
Venetians, who were driven to decapitate Carmagnu- 
ola because they feared him. The only reason why 
the Florentines were not enslaved by Sir John Hawk- 
wood was that, though an able general, he achieved 
no great successes in the field. In the same way 
they escaped by luck from Sforza, who turned his 
attention to Milan, and from Braccio, who formed 
designs against the Church and Naples. If Paolo 
Vitelli had been victorious against Pisa (1498), he 
would have held them at discretion. In each of 
these cases it was only the good fortune of the re- 
public which saved it from a military despotism. 
If, on the other hand, the mercenary captains are 
men of no capacity, you are defeated in the field. 
Proceeding to the historical development of this 
bad system, Machiavelli points out how after the 
decline of the Imperial authority in Italy, the Pa- 
pacy and the republics got the upper hand. Priesjts 
and merchants were alike unwilling to engage in 
war. Therefore they took mercenary troops into 
their pay. The companies of the Sforzeschi and 
Bracceschi were formed; and ' after these came all 
those others who have ruled this sort of warfare 
down to our own days. The consequence of their 
valor is that Italy has been harried by Charles, plun- 
dered by Louis, forced by Ferdinand, insulted by the 
Swiss. Their method has been to enhance the rep- 
utation of their cavaln' ]\\' depressing the infantry. 



AUXILIARIES. 363 

Being without dominion of their own, and making 
war their commerce, a few foot soldiers brought 
them no repute, while they were unable to support 
many. Therefore they confined themselves to cav- 
alry, until in a force of 20,000 men you could not 
number 2,000 infantry. Besides this they employed 
all their ingenuity to relieve themselves and their 
soldiers of fatigue and peril, by refraining from 
slaughter and from taking prisoners without ran- 
som. Night attacks and sorties were abandoned; 
stockades and trenches in the camp were given 
up; no one thought of a winter campaign. All 
these things were allowed, or rather introduced, in 
order to avoid, as I have . said, fatigue and peril. 
Whereby they have reduced Italy to slavery and 
insult.' Auxiliaries, such as the French troops bor- 
rowed by Cesare Borgia, and the Spaniards engaged 
by Julius II., are even worse. ' He who wants to 
be unable to win the game should make use of these 
forces; for they are far more dangerous than mer- 
cenaries, seeing that in them the cause of ruin is 
ready made — ^they are united together, and inclined 
to obey their own masters. Machiavelli enforces 
this moral by one of those rare but energetic fig- 
ures which add virile dignity to his discourse. He 
compares auxiliary troops to the armor of Saul, 
which David refused, preferring to fight Goliath 
with his stone and sling. ' In one word, arms 
borrowed from another either fall from your back, 
or weigh you down, or impede your action.' It 



364 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

remains for a prince to form his own troops and 
to take the field in person, like Cesare Borgia, when 
he discarded his French allies and the mercenary 
aid of the Orsini captains. Republics should follow 
the same course, dispatching, as the Romans did, 
their own citizens to the war, and controlling by 
law the personal ambition of victorious generals 
It was thus that the Venetians prospered in their 
conquests, before they acquired their provinces in 
Italy and adopted the Condottiere system from their 
neighbors. *A prince, therefore, should have but 
one object, one thought, one art — the art of war/ 
Those who have followed this rule have attained 
to sovereignty, like Francesco Sforza, who became 
Duke of Milan; those who have neglected it have 
lost even hereditary kingdoms, like the last Sforzas, 
who sank from dukedom into private life. Even 
amid the pleasures of the chase a prince should 
always be studying the geographical conformation of 
his country with a view to its defense, and should 
acquire a minute knowledge of such strategical laws 
as are everywhere applicable. He should read his- 
tory with the same object, and should keep before 
his eyes the example of those great men of the 
past from whom he can learn lessons for his guid- 
ance in the present. 

This brings us to the peroration of the Principe, 
which contains the practical issue toward which the 
whole treatise has been tending, the patriotic thought 
that reflects a kind of luster even on the d:irkL^,L 



NATIONAL 'ARMS.' 365 

pages that have gone before. Like Thetis, Mach- 
iavelli has dipped his Achilles In the Styx of Infernal 
counsels; like Chelron, he has shown him. how the 
human and the bestial natures should be combined 
In one who has to break the teeth of wolves and 
keep his feet from snares; like Hephalstos, he has 
forged for him Invulnerable armor. The object 
toward which this preparation has been leading is 
the liberation of Italy from the barbarians. The 
slavery of Israel In Egypt, the oppression of the 
Persians by the Medes, the dispersion of the Athe- 
nians into villages, were the occasions which en- 
abled Moses and Cyrus and Theseus to display 
their greatness. The new Prince, who would fain 
win honor in Italy and confer upon his country un- 
told benefits, finds her at the present moment * more 
enslaved than the Hebrews, more downtrodden than 
the Persians, more disunited than the Athenians, 
without a chief, without order, beaten, despoiled, 
mangled, overrun, subject to every sort of deso- 
lation.' Fortune could not have offered him a nobler 
opportunity. * See how she prays God to send her 
some one who should save her from these barbarous 
cruelties -ind Insults! See her all ready and alert 
to follow any standard, if only there be a man to 
raise it!' Then Machlavelll addresses himself to 
the chief of the Medici In person. * Nor Is there 
at the present moment any place more full of hope 
for her than your illustrious House, which by its 
valor and Its fortune, favored by God and by the 



565 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

Church, whereof.it is now the head, might take 
the lead in this delivery.' This is followed by one 
of the rare passages of courtly rhetoric which, when 
Machiavelli condescends to indulge in them, add pe- 
culiar splendor to his style. Then he turns again to 
speak of the means which should immediately be 
used. He urges Lorenzo above all things to put 
no faith in mercenaries or auxiliaries, but to raise 
his own forces, and to rely on the Italian infantry. 
If Italian armies have always been defeated in the 
field during the past twenty years, it is not due so 
much to their defective courage as to the weakness 
of their commanders. Lorenzo will have to raise a 
force capable of coping with the Swiss, the Spanish, 
and the French. The respect with which Machia- 
velli speaks at this supreme moment of these for- 
eign troops, proves how great was their prestige 
in Italy; yet he ventures to point out that there are 
faults peculiar to each of them: the Spanish infantry 
cannot stand a cavalry charge, and the Switzers are 
liable to be disconcerted by the rapid attack of the 
wiry infantry of Spain. It is therefore necessary to 
train troops capable of resisting cavalry, and not 
afraid of facing any foot soldiers in the world. 
This opportunity, therefore, must not be suffered 
to slip by; in order that Italy may after so long a 
time at last behold her saviour. Nor can I find 
words to describe the love with which he would 
be hailed in all the provinces that have suffered 
through these foreign deluges, the thirst for ven- 



PERORATION OF THE 'PRINCE,* 367 

geance, the stubborn fidelity, the piety, the tears, 
that he would meet. What gates would be closed 
against him? What people would refuse him al- 
legiance ? What jealousy would thwart him ? What 
Italian would be found to refuse him homage? This 
rule of the barbarians stinks in the nostrils of us all. 
Then let your illustrious House assume this enter- 
prise in the spirit and the confidence wherewith just 
enterprises are begun, that so, under your flag, this 
land of ours may be ennobled, and under your au- 
spices be brought to pass that prophecy of Petrarch: — 

•Lo, valor against rage 

Shall take up arms, nor shall the fight be long; 
For that old heritage 
Of courage in Italian hearts is stout and strong. 

With this trumpet-cry of impassioned patriotism the 
Principe closes. 

Hegel, in his 'Philosophy of History,' has re- 
corded a judgment of Machiavelli's treatise in relation 
to the political conditions of Italy at the end of the 
mediaeval period, which might be quoted as the most 
complete apology for the author it is possible to make. 
'This book,' he says, 'has often been cast aside with 
horror as containing maxims of the most revolting 
tyranny; yet it was Machiavelli's high sense of the 
necessity of constituting a state which caused him to 
lay down the principles on which alone states could 
be formed under the circumstances. The isolated 
lords and lordships had to be entirely suppressed; 
and though our idea of Freedom is incompatible with 



368 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

the means which he proposes both as the only avail 
able and also as wholly justifiable — including, as these 
do, the most reckless violence, all kinds of deception, 
murder, and the like — yet we must confess that the 
despots who had to be subdued were assailable in no 
other way, inasmuch as indomitable lawlessness and 
perfect depravity were thoroughly engrained in them.' 
Yet after the book has been shut and the apology 
has been weighed, we cannot but pause and ask our- 
selves this question, Which was the truer patriot — 
Machiavelli, systematizing the political vices and cor- 
ruptions of his time in a philosophical essay, and call- 
ing on the despot to whom it was dedicated to liber- 
ate Italy; or Savonarola, denouncing sin and enforcing 
repentance — Machiavelli, who taught as precepts of 
pure wisdom those very principles of public im- 
morality which lay at the root of Italy's disunion 
and weakness; or Savonarola, who insisted that with- 
out a moral reformation no liberty was possible ? We 
shall have to consider the action of Savonarola in 
another place. Meanwhile, it is not too much to 
affirm that, with diplomatists like Machiavelli, and with 
princes like those whom he has idealized, Italy could 
not be free. Hypocrisy, treachery, dissimulation, 
cruelty are the vices of the selfish and the enslaved. 
Yet Machiavelli was led by his study of the past and 
by his experience of the present to defend these vices, 
as the necessary qualities of the prince whom he 
would fain have chosen for the saviour of his country. 
It is legitimate to excuse him on the ground tliat the 



DEFECTS OF MACHIAVELLI'S THEORY. 369 

Italians of his age had not conceived a philosophy of 
right which should include duties as well as privi- 
leges, and which should guard the interests of the 
governed no less than those of the governor. It is 
true that the feudal conception of Monarchy, so well 
apprehended by him in the fourth chapter of the 
Principe, had nowhere been realized in Italy, and 
that therefore the right solution of the political prob- 
lem seemed to lie in setting force against force, and 
fraud against fraud, for a sublime purpose. It may 
also be urged with justice that the historians and 
speculators of antiquity, esteemed beyond their value 
by the students of the sixteenth century, confirmed 
him in his application of a positive philosophy to 
statecraft. The success which attended the violence 
and dissimulation of the Romans, as described by 
Livy, induced him to inculcate the principles on which 
they acted. The scientific method followed by Aris- 
totle in the Politics encouraged him in the adoption 
of a similar analysis ; while the close parallel between 
ancient Greece and mediaeval Italy was sufficient to 
create a conviction that the wisdom of the old world 
would be precisely applicable to the conditions of the 
new. These, however, are exculpations of the man, 
rather than justifications of his theory. The theory 
was false and vicious. And the fact remains that 
the man, impregnated by the bad morality of the 
period in which he lived, was incapable of ascending 
above it to the truth, was impotent with all his 
acumen to read the deepest lessons of past and 



370 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

present history, and in spite of his acknowledged 
patriotism succeeded only in adding his conscious 
and unconscious testimony to the corruption of the 
country that he loved. The broad common-sense, 
the mental soundness, the humane instinct and the 
sympathy with nature, which give fertility and whole- 
ness to the political philosophy of men like Burke, 
are absent in Machiavelli. In spite of its vigor, his 
system implies an inversion of the ruling laws of 
health in the body politic. In spite of its logical 
cogency, it is inconclusive by reason of defective 
premises. Incomparable as an essay in pathological 
anatomy, it throws no light upon the working of a 
normal so* \al organism, and has at no time been used 
with profii even by the ambitious and unscrupulous. 



CHAPTER VII^ 



THE POPES OF THE RENAISSANCE. 

The Papacy between 1447 and 1527 — The Contradictions of the Re- 
naissance Period exemplified by the Popes — Relaxation of their 
nold over the States of the Church and Rome during- the Exile in 
Avignon — Nicholas V. — His Conception of a Papal Monarchy — 
Pius II. — The Crusade — Renaissance Pontiffs — Paul II. — Perse- 
cution of the Platonists — Sixtus IV. — Nepotism — The Families 
of Riario and Delia Rovere — Avarice — Love of Warfare — Pazzi 
Conspiracy — Inquisition in Spain — Innocent VIII. — Franceschetto 
Cibo — The Election of Alexander VI. — His Consolidation of the 
Temporal Power — Policy toward Colonna and Orsini Families — 
Venality of everything in Rome — Policy toward the Sultan — The 
Index — The Borgia Family — Lucrezia — Murder of Duke of Gan- 
dia — Cesare and his Advancement — The Death of Alexander — 
Julius II. — His violent Temper — Great Projects and commanding 
Character — Leo X. — His Inferiority to Julius — S. Peter's and the 
Reformation — Adrian VI. — His Hatred of Pagan Culture — Dis- 
gust of the Roman Court at his Election — Clement VII. — ^Sack of 
Rome — Enslavement of Florence. 

In the fourteenth and the first half of the fifteenth 
centuries the authority of the Popes, both as Heads 
of the Church and as temporal rulers, had been im- 
paired by exile in France and by ruinous schisms. 
A new era began with the election of Nicholas V. 
in 1447, and ended during the pontificate of Clemert 
VII. with the sack of Rome in 1627. /Through the 
whole of this period the Popes acted more as mon- 
archs than as pontiffs, and the secularization of the 
See of Rome was carried to its utmost limits. The 



37» RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

contrast between the sacerdotal pretensions and the 
personal immorality of the Popes was glaring; nor 
had the chiefs of the Church yet learned to regard 
the liberalism of the Renaissance with suspicion. 
About the middle of the sixteenth century the Pa- 
pal States had become a recognized kingdom; while 
the Popes of this later epoch were endeavoring by 
means of the inquisition and the educational orders 
to check the free spirit of Italy.J 

The history of Italy has at all times been closely 
bound up with that of the Papacy; but at no period 
has this been more the case than during these eighty 
years of Papal worldliness, ambition, nepotism, and 
profligacy, which are also marked by the irruption 
of the European nations into Italy and by the seces- 
sion of the Teutonic races from the Latin Church. 
In this short space of time a succession of Popes 
filled the Holy Chair with such dramatic propriety 
— displaying a pride so regal, a cynicism so unblush- 
ing, so selfish a cupidity, and a policy so suicidal as 
to favor the belief that they had been placed there 
in the providence of God to warn the world against 
Babylon. At the same time the history of the Pa- 
pal Court reveals with peculiar vividness the contra- 
dictions of Renaissance morality and manners. We 
find in the Popes of this period what has been already 
noticed in the despots — learning, the patronage of 
the arts, the passion for magnificence, and the refine- 
ments of polite culture, alternating and not unfre- 
quently combined with barbarous ferocity of temper 



PAPAL PARADOXES. 375 

and with savage and coarse tastes. On the one side 
we observe a Pagan dissoluteness which would have 
scandalized the parasites of Commodus and Nero; on 
the other, a seeming zeal for dogma worthy of S. 
Dominic. The Vicar of Christ is at one time wor- 
shiped as a god by princes seeking absolution for sins 
or liberation from burdensome engagements; at an- 
other he is trampled under foot, in his capacity of 
sovereign, by the same potentates. Undisguised sen- 
suality; fraud cynical and unabashed; policy march- 
ing to its end by murders, treasons, interdicts, and 
imprisonments; the open sale of spiritual privileges; 
commercial traffic in ecclesiastical emoluments; hy- 
pocrisy and cruelty studied as fine arts; theft and 
perjury reduced to system — these are the ordinary 
scandals which beset the Papacy. Yet the Pope is 
still a holy being. His foot is kissed by thousands. 
His curse and blessing carry death and life. He 
rises from the bed of harlots to unlock or bolt the 
gates of heaven and purgatory. In the midst of 
crime he believes himself to be the representative 
of Christ on earth. These anomalies, glaring as they 
seem to us, and obvious as they might be to deeper 
thinkers like Machiavelli or Savonarola, did not shock 
the mass of men who witnessed them. The Renais- 
sance was so dazzling by its brilliancy, so confusing 
by its rapid changes, that moral distinctions were 
obliterated in a blaze of splendor, an outburst of 
new life, a carnival of liberated energies. The cor- 
rirption of Italy was only equaled by its ciiltn'-e. Its 



374 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

immorality was matched by its enthusiasm. It was 
not the decay of an old age dying, so much as the 
fermentation of a new age coming into life, that bred 
the monstrous paradoxes of the fifteenth and the six- 
teenth centuries. The contrast between mediaeval 
Christianity and renascent Paganism — the sharp con- 
flict of two adverse principles, destined to fuse their 
forces and to recompose the modern world — made 
the Renaissance what it was in Italy. Nowhere is 
the first effervescence of these elements so well dis- 
played as in the history of those Pontiffs who, after 
striving in the Middle Ages to suppress humanity 
beneath a cowl, are now the chief actors in the 
comedy of Aphrodite and Priapus raising their fore- 
heads once more to the light of day. 

^ The struggle carried on between the Popes of the 
thirteenth century and the House of Hohenstauffen 
ended in the elevation of the Princes of Anjou to the 
throne of Naples — the most pernicious of all the evils 
inflicted by the Papal power on Italy. Then followed 
the French tyranny, under which Boniface VIII. ex- 
pired at Anagni. Benedict XL was poisoned at the 
instigation of Philip le Bel, and the Papal see was 
transferred to Avignon. The Popes lost their hold 
upon the city of Rome and upon those territories of 
Romagna, the March, and S. Peter's Patrimony which 
had been confirmed to them by the grant of Rodolph 
of Hapsburg (1273). They had to govern their Ital- 
ian dependencies by means of Legates, while, one by 
one, the cities which liad recognized their sway passed 



FRENCH TYRANNY. 375 

beneath the yoke of independent princes. The Mala- 
testi established themselves in Rimini, Pesaro, and 
Fano; the house of Montefeltro confirmed its occupa 
tion of Urbino; Camerino, Faenza, Ravenna, Forli, 
and Imola became the appanages of the Varani, 
the Maufredi, the Polentani, the Ordelaffi, and the 
Alidosi.^ The traditional supremacy of the Popes 
was acknowledged in these tyrannies; but the nobles 
I have named acquired a real authority, against which 
Egidio Albornoz and Robert of Geneva struggled to 
a great extent in vain, and to break which at a future 
period taxed the whole energies of Sixtus and of 
Alexander. 

While the influence of the Popes was thus weak 
ened in their states beyond the Apennines, three 
great families, the Orsini, the Savelli, and the Colon - 
nesi, grew to princely eminence in Rome and its im 
mediate neighborhood. They had been severally 
raised to power during the second half of the thir- 
teenth century by the nepotism of Nicholas III., 
Honorius IV., and Nicholas IV. This nepotism 
bore baneful fruits in the future; for during the exile 
ip. Avignon the houses of Colonna and Orsini be- 
came so overbearing as to threaten the freedom and 
safety of the Popes. It was again reserved for Six 
tus and Alexander to undo the work of their prede 
cessors and to secure the independence of the Holy 
See by the coercion of these towering nobles. 
, In the States of the Church the temporal power 

' See Mach. 1st. Fior. lib. i. 



376 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

of the Popes, founded upon false donations, confirmed 
by tradition, and contested by rival despots, was ar 
anomaly. In Rome itself their situation, though dif- 
ferent, was no less peculiar. While the factions of 
Orsini and Colonna divided the Campagna and wran- 
gled in the streets of the city, Rome continued to pre- 
serve, in form at least, the old constitution of Ca- 
porioni and Senator. The Senator, elected by the 
people, swore, not to obey the Pope, but to defend 
his person. The government was ostensibly repub- 
lican. The Pope had no sovereign rights, but only 
the ascendency inseparable from his wealth and from 
his position as Primate of Christendom. At the same 
time the spirit of Arnold of Brescia, of Brancaleone, 
and of Rienzi revived from time to time in patriots 
like Porcari and Baroncelli, who resented the en- 
croachments of the Church upon the privileges of the 
city. Rome afforded no real security to the members 
of the Holy College. They commanded no fortress 
like the Castello of Milan, and had no army at their 
disposition. When the people or the nobles rose 
against them, the best they could do was to retire to 
Orvieto or Viterbo, and to wait the passing of the' 
storm. 

Such was the position of the Pope, considered as 
one of the ruling princes of Italy, before the election 
of Nicholas V. His authority was wide but unde- 
fined, confirmed by prescription, but based on neither 
force nor legal right. Italy, however, regarded the 
Papac}' as indispensable to her prosperity, while Rome 



POSITION OF THE POPE, 377 

was proud to be called the metropolis of Christendom, 
and ready to sacrifice the shadow of republican lib- 
erty for the material advantages which might accrue 
from the sovereignty of her bishop. How the Roman 
burghers may have felt upon this point we gather 
from a sentence of Leo Alberti's, referring to the 
administration of Nicholas: 'The city had become a 
city of gold through the jubilee; the dignity of the 
citizens was respected; all reasonable petitions were 
granted by the Pontiff. There were no exactions, 
no new taxes. Justice was fairly administered. It 
was the whole care of the Pontiff to adorn the city.' ^ 
The prosperity which the Papal court brought to 
Rome was the main support of the Popes as princes, 
at a time when many thinkers looked with Dante's 
jealousy upon the union of temporal and spiritual 
functions in the Papacy.^ Moreover, the whole of 
Italy, as we have seen in the previous chapters, was 
undergoing a gradual and instinctive change in pol- 
itics; commonwealths were being superseded by tyr- 
annies, and the sentiments of the race at large were 
by no means unfavorable to this revolution. Now 
was the proper moment, therefore, for the Popes to 
convert their ill-defined authority into a settled des- 
potism, to secure themselves in Rome as sovereigns, 



• See history of Porcari's Conspiracy (Muratori, vol. xxv.). 

* Lorenzo Valla's famous declamation against the Donation ot 
Constantine, which appeared during the pontificate of Nicholas, con- 
tained these reminiscences of the ' De Monarchic ': ' Ut Papa tantum 
vicarius Christi sit et non etiam Caesaris . . . tunc Papa et erit et 
dicetur pater sanctus, pater omnium, pater ecclesiae.' 



578 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

and to subdue the States of the Church to their tem- 
poral jurisdiction. 

\ The work was begun by Thomas of Sarzana, who 
ascended the Chair of S. Peter, as Nicholas V., in 
1447. One part of his biography belongs to the 
history of scholarship, and need not here be touched 
upon. Educated at Florence, under the shadow of 
the house of Medici, he had imbibed those princi- 
ples of deference to princely authority which were 
supplanting the old republican virtues throughout 
Italy. The schisms which had rent the Catholic 
Church were healed; and finding no opposition to 
his spiritual power, he determined to consolidate 
the temporalities of his See. In this purpose he 
was confirmed by the conspiracy of Stefano Porcari, 
a Roman noble who had endeavored to rouse repub- 
lican enthusiasm in the city at the moment of the 
Pope's election, and who subsequently plotted against 
his liberty, if not his life. Porcari and his associates 
were put to death in 1453, and by this act the Pope 
proclaimed himself a monarch. The vast wealth 
which the jubilee of i45o had poured into the Pa- 
[)al coffers ^ he employed in beautifying the city of 
Rome and in creating a stronghold for the Sovereign 
Pontiff. The mausoleum of Hadrian, used long be- 
fore as a fortress in the Middle Ages, was now 
strengthened, while the bridge of S. Angelo and 
the Leonine city were so connected and defended 

' The bank of the Medici alone held 100,000 florins for the Pope 
Vespasiano, Vit. Nic, V. 



THE NEW VATICAN. 379 

by a system of walls and outworks as to give the 
key of Rome into the hands of the Pope. A new 
Vatican began to rise, and the foundations of a no- 
bler S. Peter's Church were laid within the circuit 
of the Papal domain. Nicholas had, in fact, con- 
ceived the great idea of restoring the supremacy of 
Rome, not after the fashion of a Hildebrand, by 
enforcing the spiritual despotism of the Papacy, but 
by establishing the Popes as kings, by renewing the 
architectural magnificence of the Eternal City, and by 
rendering his court the center of European culture. 
In the will which he recited on his death-bed to the 
princes of the Church, he set forth all that he had 
done for the secular and ecclesiastical architecture of 
Rome, explaining his deep sense of the necessity of 
securing the Popes from internal revolution and ex- 
ternal force, together with his desire to exalt the 
Church by rendering her chief seat splendid in the 
eyes of Christendom. This testament of Nicholas 
remains a memorable document. Nothing illustrates 
more forcibly the transition from the Middle Ages 
to the worldliness of the Renaissance than the con- 
viction of the Pontiff that the destinies of Christian- 
ity depended on the state and glory of the town of 
Rome. What he began was carried on amid crime, 
anarchy, and bloodshed by successive Popes of the 
Renaissance, until at last the troops of Frundsberg 
paved the way, in i527, for the Jesuits of Loyola, 
and Rome, still the Eternal City, cloaked her splen- 
dor and her scandp.ls beneath the black pall of Span- 



380 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

ish inquisitors. The political changes in the Papacy 
initiated by Nicholas had been, however, by that 
date fully accomplished, and for more than three 
centuries the Popes have since held rank among the 
kings of the earth. 

\Of Alfonso Borgia, who reigned for three years 
as Calixtus III., little need be said, except that his 
pontificate prepared for the greatness of his nephew, 
Roderigo Lenzuoli, known as Borgia in compliment 
to his uncle. The last days of Nicholas had been 
imbittered by the fall of Constantinople and the im- 
minent peril which threatened Europe from the Turks. 
The whole energies of Pius II. were directed towards 
the one end of uniting the European nations against 
the infidel, ^neas Sylvius Piccolomini, as an au- 
thor, an orator, a diplomatist, a traveller, and a court 
ier, bears a name illustrious in the annals of the Re 
naissance. As a Pope, he claims attention for the 
single-hearted zeal which he displayed in the vain 
attempt to rouse the piety of Christendom against 
the foes of civilization and the faith. Rarely has a 
greater contrast been displayed between the man and 
the pontiff than in the case of Pius. The pleasure 
loving, astute, free-thinking man of letters and the 
world has become a Holy Father, jealous for Chris- 
tian proprieties, and bent on stirring Europe by an 
appeal to motives which had lost their force three 
centuries before. Frederick II. and S. Louis closed 
the age of the Crusades, the one by striking a bar- 
gain with the infidel, the other by snatching at a 



PIUS II. 381 

martyr's crown. yEneas Sylvius PIccolomini was the 
mirror of his times — a humanist and stylist, imbued 
with the rhetorical and pseudo-classic taste of the 
earlier Renaissance. Pius II. is almost an anach- 
ronism. The disappointment which the learned world 
experienced when they discovered that the new Pope, 
from whom so much had been expected, declined to 
play the part of their Maecenas, may be gathered 
from the epigrams of Filelfo upon his death ^ : — 

Gaudcat orator, Musae gaudete Latinae; 

Sustulit e medio quod Deus ipse Pium. 
Ut bene consuluit doctis Deus omnibus seque, 

Quos Pius in cunctos se tulit usque gravem. 
Nunc sperare licet. Nobis Deus optime Quintum 

Reddito Nicoleon Eugeniumve patrem. 

and again : — 

Hac sibi quam vivus construxit clauditur area 
Corpore; nam Stygios mens habet atra lacus. 

Pius himself was not unconscious of the discrepancy 
between his old and his new self, y^neam rejicitCy 
Piiim recipite, he exclaims in a celebrated passage 
of his Retractation, where he declares his heartfelt 
lorrow for the irrevocable words of light and vain ro- 
mance that he had scattered in his careless youth. Yet 
though Pius II. proved a virtual failure by lacking 
the strength to lead his age either backwards to the 
ideal of earlier Christianity or forwards on the path 
rf modern culture, he is the last Pope of the Renais- 
sance period whom we can regard with real respect 

• Rosmini, Vita di Filelfo^ vol. li. p. 321. 



382 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

Those who follow, and with whose personal char- 
acters, rather than their action as Pontiffs, we shall 
now be principally occupied, sacrificed the interests 
of Christendom to family ambition, secured their 
sovereignty at the price of discord in Italy, transacted 
with the infidel, and played the part of Antichrist 
upon the theater of Europe. 

It would be possible to write the history of these 
priest- kings without dwelling more than lightly on 
scandalous circumstances, to merge the court-chron- 
icle of the Vatican in a recital of European politics, 
or to hide the true features of high Papal dignitaries 
beneath the masks constructed for them by ecclesias- 
tical apologists. That cannot, however, be the line 
adopted by a writer treating of civilization in Italy 
during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. He must 
paint the Popes of the Renaissance as they appeared 
In the midst of society, when Lorenzo de* Medici 
called Rome ' a sink of all the vices,' and observers 
so competent as Machiavelli and Guicciardini as- 
cribed the moral depravity and political decay of 
Italy to their influence. It might be objected that 
there is now no need to portray the profligacy of 
that court, which, by arousing the conscience of 
Northern Europe to a sense of intolerable shame, 
proved one of the main causes of the Reformation. 
But without reviewing those old scandals, a true un- 
derstanding of Italian morality, and a true insight 
into Italian social feeling as expressed in literature, 
are alike impossible. Nor will the historian of this 



PAUL II. 383 

epoch shrink from his task, even though the trans- 
actions he has to record seem to savor of legend 
rather than of simple fact. No fiction contains matter 
more fantastic, no myth or allegory is more adapted 
to express a truth in figures of the fancy, than the 
authentic well-attested annals of this period of sev- 
enty years, from 1464 to 1534. 

Paul the Second was a Venetian named Pietro 
Barbi, who began life as a merchant. He had al- 
ready shipped his worldly goods on board a trading 
vessel for a foreign trip, when news reached him 
that his uncle had been made Pope under the name 
of Eugenius IV. His call to the ministry consisted 
of the calculation that he could make his fortune in 
the Church with a Pope for uncle sooner than on 
the high seas by his wits. So he unloaded his 
bales, took to his book, became a priest, and at 
the age of forty- eight rose to the Papacy. Being 
a handsome man, he was fain to take the eccle- 
siastical title of Formosus; but the Cardinals dis- 
suaded him from this parade of vanity, and he 
assumed the tiara as Paul in 1464. A vulgar love 
of show was his ruling characteristic. He spent 
enormous sums in the collection of jewels, and his 
tiara alone was valued at 200,000 golden florins. 
In all public ceremonies, whether ecclesiastical or 
secular, he was splendid, delighting equally to sun 
himself before the eyes of the Romans as the chief 
actor in an Easter benediction or a Carnival proces- 
sion. The poorer Cardinal? received subsidies from 



384 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

his purse in order that they might add luster to his 
pageants by their retinues. The arts found in him 
a munificent patron. For the building of the palace 
of S. Marco, which marks an abrupt departure from 
the previous Gothic style in vogue, he brought archi- 
tects of eminence to Rome, and gave employment 
to Mino da Fiesole, the sculptor, and to Giuliano da 
San Gallo, the wood-carver. The arches of Titus 
and Septimius Severus were restored at his expense, 
together with the statue of Marcus Aurelius and the 
horses of Monte Cavallo. But Paul showed his con- 
noisseurship more especially in the collection of gems, 
medals, precious stones, and cameos, accumulating 
rare treasures of antiquity and costly masterpieces 
of Italian and Flemish gold-work in his cabinets. 
This patronage of contemporary art, no less than 
the appreciation of classical monuments, marked him 
as a Maecenas of the true Renaissance type.^ But 

> See Les Arts d la Cour des Papes pendant le XV. et le xvi. 

Siecles, E. Miintz, Paris, Thorin, 2me Partie. M. Miintz has done 
g-ood service to esthetic archseology by vindicating the fame of 
Paul II. as an employer of artists from the wholesale abuse heaped 
on him by Platina. It may here be conveniently noticed that even 
the fierce Sixtus IV. showed intelligence as a patron of arts and let- 
ters. He built the Sistine Chapel, and brought the greatest painters 
of the day to Rome — Signorelli, Perugino, Botticelli, Cosimo, Ros- 
selli, and Ghirlandajo. Melozzo da Forli worked for him. One of 
that painter's few remaining masterpieces is the wall-picture, now in 
the Vatican, which represents Sixtus among his Cardinals and Secre- 
taries — a magnificent piece of vivid portraiture. Sixtus again threw 
the Vatican library open to the public, and in his days the Confra- 
teniity of S. Luke was founded for the encouragement of design. 
Rome owes to him the hospital of S. Spirito, a severe building, by 
Baccio Pontelli, and the churches of S. Maria del Popolo and S. Maria 
della Pace. Innocent VIII. added the Belvedere to the Vatican after 



PERSECUTION OF THE ROMAN PLATONISTS. 385 

the qualities of a dilettante were not calculated to 
shed luster on a Pontiff who spent the substance 
of the Church in heaping up immensely valuable 
curiosities. His thirst for gold and his love of 
hoarding were so extreme that, when bishoprics 
fell vacant, he often refused to fill them up, draw- 
ing their revenues for his own use. His court was 
luxurious, and in private he was addicted to sensual 
lust.^ This would not, however, have brought his 
name into bad odor in Rome, where the Holy Fa- 
ther was already regarded as an Italian despot with 
certain sacerdotal additions. It was his prosecution 
of the Platonists which made him unpopular in an 
age when men had the right to expect that, what- 
ever happened, learning at least would be respected. 
The example of the Florentine and Neapolitan acad- 
emies had encouraged the Romans to found a so- 
ciety for the discussion of philosophical questions. 
The Pope conceived that a political intrigue was 



Antonio del Pollajuolo's plan, and commenced the Villrv Magliana. 
Alexander VI. enriched the Vatican with the famous Borgia apart- 
ments, decorated by Pinturhicchio. He also began the Palace of the 
University, and converted the Mausoleum of Hadrian into the Castle 
of S. Angelo. These brief allusions must suffice. It is not the object 
of the present chapter to treat of the Popes as patrons; but it should 
not be forgotten that, having accepted a place among the despots of 
Italy, they strove to acquit their debt to art and learning in th« spirit 
of contemporary potentates. 

» Corio sums up his character thus: ' Fu costui uomo alia libidine 
molto proclivo; in grandissimo precio furono le gioie appresso di lui. 
Del giomo faceva notte, e la notte ispediva quanto gli occorreva.' 
Marcus Attilius Alexius says: ' Paulus II. ex concubina domum re- 
plevit, et quasi sterquilinium facta est sedes Barionis.' See Grego» 
ovius, Stadt Rom, vol. vii. p. 215, for the latter quotation. 



386 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

the real object of this club. Nor was the suspicion 
wholly destitute of color. The conspiracy of Por- 
cari against Nicholas, and the Catilinarian riots of 
Tiburzio which had troubled the pontificate of Pius, 
were still fresh in people's memories; nor was the 
position of the Pope in Rome as yet by any means 
secure. What increased Paul's anxiety was the fact 
that some scholars, appointed secretaries of the briefs 
(Abbreviatori) by Pius and deprived of office by him- 
self, were members of the Platonic Society. Their 
animosity against him was both natural and ill-con- 
cealed. At the same time the bitter hatred avowed 
by Laurentius Valla against the temporal power might 
in an age of conjurations have meant active malice. 
Leo Alberti hints that Porcari had been supported 
by strong backers outside Rome ; and one of the 
accusations against the Platonists was that Pom- 
ponius Lsetus had addressed Platina as Holy Fa- 
ther. Now both Pomponius Laetus and Valla had 
influence in Naples, while Paul was on the verge 
of open rupture with King Ferdinand. He there- 
fore had sufficient grounds for suspecting a Neapoli- 
tan intrigue, in which the humanists were playing the 
parts of Brutus and Cassius. Yet though we take 
this trouble to construct some show of reason for 
the panic of the Pope, the fact remains that he was 
really mistaken at the outset; and of the stupidity, 
cruelty, and injustice of his subsequent conduct there 
can be no doubt. He seized the chief members of 
the Roman Academy, irnprisoned them, put them to 



SIXTUS IV. 387 

the torture, and killed some of them upon the rack. 
'vYou would have taken Castle S. Angelo for Pha 
laris' bull,' writes Platina; ' the hollow vaults did so 
resound with the cries of innocent young men.' No 
tividence of a conspiracy could be extorted. Then 
Paul tried the survivors for unorthodoxy. They 
proved the soundness of their faith to the satisfac- 
tion of the Pope's inquisitors. Nothing remained 
but to release them, or to shut them up in dun- 
geons, in order that the people might not say 
the Holy Father had arrested them without due 
cause. The latter course was chosen. Platina, the 
historian of the Popes, was one of the abbreviatori 
whom Paul had cashiered, and one of the Platonists 
whom he had tortured. The tale of Papal persecu- 
tion loses, therefore, nothing in the telling; for if 
the humanists of the fifteenth century were power- 
ful in anything it was in writing innuendoes and 
invectives. Among other anecdotes, he relates how., 
while he was being dislocated on the rack, the in- 
quisitors Vianesi and Sanga held a sprightly colloquy 
about a ring which the one said jestingly the other 
had received as a love -token from a girl. The whole 
situation is characteristic of Papal Rome in the Re 
naissance. 

Paul did not live as long as his comparative youth 
led people to anticipate. He died of apoplexy in 
147 1, alone and suddenly, after supping on two huge 
watermelons, duos prcegrandes pepones. His suc- 
cessor was a man of base extraction, named P>an- 



SSS /RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

cesco della Rovere,. born near the town of Savona on 
the Genoese Riviera. It was his whim to be thought 
noble; so he bought the goodwill of the ancient house 
of Rovere of Turin by giving them two cardinals' hats, 
and proclaimed himself their kinsman. Theirs is the 
golden oak-tree on an azure ground which Michael 
Angelo painted on the roof of the Sistine Chapel in 
compliment to Sixtus and his nephew Julius. Hav- 
ing bribed the most venal members of the Sacred 
College, Francesco della Rovere was elected Pope, 
and assumed the name of Sixtus IV. He began his 
career with a lie; for though he succeeded to the 
avaricious Paul who had spent his time in amassing 
money which he did not use, he declared that he had 
only found 5,ooo florins in the Papal treasury. This 
assertion was proved false by the prodigality with 
which he lavished wealth immediately upon his 
nephews. It is difficult even to hint at the horrible 
suspicions which were cast upon the birth of two of 
the Pope's nephews and upon the nature of his weak- 
ness for them. Yet the private life of Sixtus rendered 
the most monstrous stories plausible, while his public 
treatment of these men recalled to mind the partiality 
of Nero for Doryphorus.^ We may, however, dwell 

> The infamous stories about Sixtus and Alexander may in part 
be fables, currently reported by the vulgar and committed to epi- 
grams by scholars. Still the fact remains that Infessura, Burchard, 
and the Venetian ambassadors relate of these two Popes such traits 
of character and such abominable actions as render the worst cal- 
umnies probable. Infessura, though he expressed horror for the 
crimes of Sixtus, was yet a dry chronicler of daily events, many of 
which passed beneath his own eyes. Burchard was a frigid diarist 



NEPHEWS OF SIXTUS. 389 

upon the principal features of his nepotism: for Sixtus 
was the first Pontiff who deliberately organized a sys 
tern for pillaging the Church in order to exalt his fam- 
ily to principalities. The weakness of this policy has 
already been exposed^: its justification, if there is 
any, lies in the exigencies of a dynasty which had no 
legitimate or hereditary succession. The names of 
the Pope's nephews were Lionardo, Giuliano, and 
Giovanni della Rovere, the three sons of his brother 
Raffaello; Pietro and Girolamo Riario, the two sons 
of his sister Jolanda; and Girolamo, the son of another 
sister married to Giovanni Basso. With the notable 
exception of Giuliano della Rovere,^ these young men 
had no claim to distinction beyond good looks and a 
certain martial spirit which ill suited with the ecclesi- 
astical dignities thrust upon some of them. Lionardo 
was made prefect of Rome and married to a natural 
daughter of King Ferdinand of Naples. Giuliano 
received a Cardinal's hat, and, after a tempestuous 
warfare with the intervening Popes, ascended the 
Holy Chair as Julius II. Girolamo Basso was created 



of Court ceremonies, who reported the rapes, murders, and profli- 
gacies of Alexander with phlegmatic gravity. The evidence of these 
men, neither of whom indulges in satire strictly so called, is more 
valuable than that of Tacitus or Suetonius to the vices of the Roman 
emperors. The dispatches of the Venetian ambassadors, again, are 
trustworthy, seeing they were always written with political intention 
and not for the sake of gossip. 

> See ch. iii. p. 113. 

* As Julius II., by far the greatest name in his age. Yet even 
Giuliano did not at first impress men with his power. Jacobus Vol- 
aterranus (Mur. xxiii. 107) writes of him: ' Vir est naturae duriusculae, 
ac uti ingenii, mediocris literaturas.' 



59© RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

Cardinal of San Crrsogono in 1477, and died in i5o7. 
Girolamo Riario wedded Catherine, a natural daughter 
of Galeazzo Sforza. For him the Pope in 1473 bought 
the town of Imola with money of the Church, and, 
after adding to it Forli, made Girolamo a Duke. He 
was murdered by his subjects in the latter place in 
1488, not, however, before he had founded a line of 
princes. Pietro, another nephew of the Riario blood, 
or, as scandal then reported and Muratori has since 
believed, a son of the Pope himself, was elevated at 
the age of twenty-six to the dignities of Cardinal, 
Patriarch of Constantinople, and Archbishop of Flor- 
ence. He had no virtues, no abilities, nothing but his 
beauty, the scandalous affection of the Pope, and the 
extravagant profligacy of his own life to recommend 
him to the notice of posterity. All Italy during two 
years rang with the noise of his debaucheries. His 
official revenues were estimated at 60,000 golden 
florins; but in his short career of profligate magnifi- 
cence he managed to squander a sum reckoned at 
not less than 200,000. When Leonora of Aragon 
passed through Rome on her way to wed the Mar- 
quis of Ferrara, this fop of a Patriarch erected a pavil- 
ion in the Piazza de' Santi Apostoli for her entertain- 
ment.i The square was partitioned into chambers 
communicating with the palace of the Cardinal. The 
ordinary hangings were of velvet and of white and 
crimson silk, while one of the apartments was draped 
with the famous tapestries of Nicholas V., whi:h repre- 

' For what follows read Corio, Storia di Milano, pp. 4i7-2a 



PJETRO'S DEBAUCHERIES, 39 1 

sented the Creation of the World. All the utensils in 
this magic dwelling were of silver — even to the very 
vilest. The air of the banquet-hall was cooled with 
punkahs; tre mantici coperti^ chefacevanocontinoamente 
vento, are the words of Corio; and on a column in the 
center stood a living naked gilded boy, who poured 
forth water from an urn. The description of the feast 
takes up three pages of the history of Corio, where 
we find a minute list of the dishes — wild boars and 
deer and peacocks, roasted whole; peeled oranges, 
gilt and sugared; gilt rolls; rose water for washing; 
and the tales of Perseus, Atalanta, Hercules, etc., 
wrought in pastry — tutte in vivande. We are also 
told how masques of Hercules, Jason, and Phaedra al- 
ternated with the story of Susannah and the Elders, 
played by Florentine actors, and with the Mysteries 
of San Giovan Battista decapitato and quel Giudeo 
che rosfi il corpo di Crista. The servants were ar- 
rayed in silk, and the seneschal changed his dress of 
richest stuffs and jewels four times in the course of 
the banquet. Nymphs and centaurs, singers and 
buffoons, drank choice wine from golden goblets. 
The most eminent and reverend master of the palace, 
meanwhile, moved among his guests * like some great 
Caesar's son.* The whole entertainment lasted from 
Saturday till Thursday, during which time Ercole of 
Este and his bride assisted at Church ceremonies in 
S. Peter's, and visited the notabilities of Rome in the 
intervals of games, dances, and banquets of the kind 
described. We need scarcely add that, in snite of his 



399 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

enormous wealth,, the young Cardinal died 60,000 
florins in debt. Happily for the Church and for Italy, 
he expired at Rome in January 1474, after parading 
his impudent debaucheries through Milan and Venice 
as the Pope's Legate. It was rumored, but never 
well authenticated, that the Venetians helped his 
death by poison.^ The sensual indulgences of every 
sort in which this child of the proletariat, suddenly 
raised to princely splendor, wallowed for twenty-five 
continuous months, are enough to account for his im- 
mature death without the hypothesis of poisoning. 
With him expired a plan which might have ended in 
making the Papacy a secular, hereditary kingdom. 
During his stay at Milan, Pietro struck a bargain with 
the Duke, by the terms of which Galeazzo Maria Sforza 
was to be crowned king of Lombardy, while the 
Cardinal Legate was to return and seize upon the 
Papal throne.2 Sixtus, it is said, was willing to abdi- 
cate in his nephew's favor, with a view to the firmer 
establishment of his family in the tyranny of Rome. 
The scheme was a wild one, yet, considering the 
power and wealth of the Sforza family, not so wholly 
impracticable as might appear. The same dream 
floated, a few years later, before the imagination of 
the two Borgias; and Machiavelli wrote in his calm 
style that to make the Papal power hereditary was 
all that remained for nepotism in his days to do.* 

> Mach. 1st, Fior. lib. vii.; Corio, p. 420. 

• See Corio, p. 420. Corio hints that the Venetians poisoned the 
Cardinal for fear of this convention being carried out. 

> 1st. Fior. lib. i. vol. i. p. 38. 



PAPAL FINANCE, 393 

The opinion which had been conceived of the Cardi- 
nal of San Sisto during his two years of eminence 
may be gathered from the following couplets of 
an epigram placed, as Corio informs us, on his 
tomb: — 

Fur, scortum, leno, moechus, pedico, cynaedus, 

Et scurra, et fidicen cedat ab Italic: 
Namque ilia Ausonii pestis scelerata senatOs, 
Petrus, ad infemas est modo raptus aquas. 

After the death of Pietro, Sixtus took his last 
nephew, Giovanni della Rovere, into like favor. He 
was married to Giovanna, daughter of Federigo di 
Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, and created Duke of 
Sinigaglia. Afterwards he became Prefect of Rome, 
upon the death of his brother Lionardo. This man 
founded the second dynasty in the Dukedom of Ur- 
bino. The plebeian violence of the della Rovere 
temper reached a climax in Giovanni's son, the Duke 
Francesco Maria, who murdered his sister's lover 
with his own hand when a youth of sixteen, stabbed 
the Papal Legate to death in the streets of Bologn? 
at the age of twenty, and knocked Guicciardini, the 
historian, down with a blow of his fist during a coun- 
cil of war in i526. 

Sixtus, however, while thus providing for his fam- 
ily, could not enjoy life without some youthful pro- 
tege about his person. Accordingly in 1463 he made 
his valet, a lad of no education and of base birth, 
Cardinal and Bishop of Parma at the age of twenty. 
His merit was the beauty of a young Olympian. 



394 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

With this divine gift he luckily combined a harm 
less though stupid character. 

With all these favorites to plant out in life, the 
Pope was naturally short of money. He relied on 
two principal methods for replenishing his coffers. 
One was the public sale of places about the Court 
at Rome, each of which had its well-known price.^ 
Benefices were disposed of with rather more reserve 
and privacy, for simony had not yet come to be con- 
sidered venial. Yet it was notorious that Sixtus held 
no privilege within his pontifical control on which he 
was not willing to raise money: * Our churches, priests, 
altars, sacred rites, our prayers, our heaven, our very 
God, are purchasable ! ' exclaims a scholar of the 
time; while the Holy Father himself was wont to 
say, * A pope needs only pen and Ink to get what 
sum he wants.' ^ The second great financial expe- 
dient was the monopoly of corn throughout the Papal 
States. Fictitious dearths were created; the value of 
wheat was raised to famine prices; good grain was 

» The greatest ingenuity was displayed in promoting this market. 
Infessura writes: ' Multa et inexcogitata in Curia Romans officia 
adinvenit et vendidit,' p. 1183. 

2 Baptista Mantuanus, de Calamitatibus Temporum, lib. iii. 

Venalia nobis 
Templa, sacerdotes, altaria, sacra, coronas, 
Ignes, thura, preces, coelum est venale, Deusque. 

Soriano, the Venetian ambassador, ap. Alberi ii. 3, p. 330, writes: 
' Conviene ricordarsi quello che soleva dire Sisto IV., che al papa 
bastava solo la mano con la penna e 1' inchiostro, per avere quella 
somrna che vuole.' Cp. Aen. Sylv. Pice. Ep. i. 66: 'Nihil est quod 
absque argento Romana Curia dedat; nam et ipsae manus iniposi- 
tiones et Spiritus Sancti dona venduntur, nee peccatorum venia nisi 
aummatis impenditur.' 



WARS OF SIXTUS. 395 

sold out of the kingdom, and bad imported in ex- 
change; while Sixtus forced his subjects to purchase 
from his stores, and made a profit by the hunger and 
diseas-e of his emaciated provinces. Ferdinand, the 
King of Naples, practiced the same system in the 
south. It is worth while to hear what this bread 
was like from one of the men condemned to eat it: 
*\The bread made from the corn of which I have 
spoken was black, stinking, and abominable; one 
was obliged to consume it, and from this cause 
sickness frequently took hold upon the State.' ^ 

\But Christendom beheld in Sixtus not merely the 
spectacle of a Pope who trafficked in the bodies of 
his subjects and the holy things of God, to squander 
basely gotten gold upon abandoned minions. The 
peace of Italy was destroyed by desolating wars in 
the advancement of the same worthless favorites. 
Sixtus desired to annex Ferrara to the dominions 
of Girolamo Riario. Nothing stood in his way but 
the House of Este, firmly planted for centuries, and 
connected by marriage or alliance with all the chief 
families of Italy. The Pope, whose lust for blood 
and broils was only equaled by his avarice and his 
iibertinism,^ rushed with wild delight into a project 

» Intessura, Eccardus, vol. ii. p. 1941: ' Panis vero qui ex dicto 

"umento fiebat, erat ater, foetidus, et abominabilis; e ex necessitate 
omedebatur, ex quo saepenumero in civitate morbus viguit.' 

« This phrase requires support. Infessura (loc. cit. p. 1941) re- 
t les the savage pleasure with v^^hich Sixtus watched a combat ' a 
iteccato chiuso.' Hearing that a duel to the death was to be fought 
by two bands of his body-guard, he told them to choose the Pi.iz/a 
of S. Peter for their rendezvous. Then he appeared at a window, 



396 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

which involved ' the discord of the whole Peninsula 
He made treaties with Venice and unmade them, 
stirred up all the passions of the despots and set 
them together by the ears, called the Swiss merce- 
naries into Lombardy, and when finally, tired of fight- 
ing for his nephew, the Italian powers concluded the 
peace of Bagnolo, he died of rage in 1484. The Pope 
did actually die of disappointed fury because peace 
had been restored to the country he had mangled for 
the sake of a favorite nephew. 

The crime of Sixtus which most vividly paints 
the corruption of the Papacy in his age remains still 
to be told. This was the sanction of the Pazzi 
Conjuration against Giuliano and Lorenzo de' Medici. 
In the year 1477 the Medici, after excluding the mer- 
chant princes of the Pazzi family from the magis- 
tracy at Florence and otherwise annoying them, had 
driven Francesco de' Pazzi in disgust to Rome. 
Sixtus chose him for his banker in the place of the 
Medicean Company. He became intimate with 
Girolamo Riario, and was well received at the Papal 
Court. Political reasons at this moment made the 

blessed the combatants, and crossed himself as a signal for the bat- 
tle to begin. We who think the ring, the cockpit, and the bullfighi 
barbarous, should study Pollajuolo's engraving in order to imagine 
the horrors of a duel ' a steccato chiuso.' Of the inclination of Sixtus 
to sensuality, Infessura writes: 'Hie, ut fertur vulgo, et experientia 
demonstravit, puerorum amator et sodomita fuit.' After mention 
ing the Riarii and a barber's son, aged twelve, he goes on: 'taceo 
nunc alia, quae circa hoc possent recitari, quia visa sunt de continuo. 
It was not, perhaps, a wholly Protestant calumny which accused 
Sixtus of granting private indulgences for the commission of abomi 
nable crimes in certain seasons of the year. 



PAZZI CONSPIRACY. 397 

Pope and his nephew anxious to destroy the Medici, 
who opposed Girolamo's schemes of aggrandizement 
in Lombardy. Private rancor induced Francesco de' 
Pazzi to second their views and to stimulate their 
passion. The three between them hatched a plot 
which was joined by Salviati, Archbishop of Pisa, 
another private foe of the Medici, and by Giambattista 
Montesecco, a captain well affected to the Count 
Girolamo. The first design of the conspirators was 
to lure the brothers Medici to Rome, and to kill 
them there. But the young men were too prudent 
to leave Florence. Pazzi and Salviati then proceeded 
to Tuscany, hoping either at a banquet or in church 
to succeed in murdering their two enemies together. 
Bernardo Bandini, a man of blood by trade, and 
Francesco de' Pazzi were chosen to assassinate Giu- 
liano. Giambattista Montesecco undertook to dis- 
pose of Lorenzo.^ The 26th of April 1478 was 
finally fixed for the deed. The place selected was 
the Duomo.2 The elevation of the Host at Mass-time 

' His ' Confession,' printed by Fabroni, Lorenzi Medicis Vita, 
vol. ii. p. 168, gives an interesting account of the hatching of the 
plot. It is fair to Sixtus to say that Montesecco exculpates him of 
the design to murder the Medici. He only wanted to ruin them. 
- — 2 It is curious to note how many of the numerous Italian tyranni- 
cides took place in church. The Chiavelli of Fabriano were mur- 
dered during a solemn service in 1435; the sentence of the creed 'Et 
incarnatus est ' was chosen for the signal. Gian Maria Visconti was 
killed in San Gottardo (141 2), Galeazzo Maria Sforza in San Stefano 
(1484). Lodovico Moro only just escaped assassination in Sant' Am- 
brogio (1484). Machiavelli says that Lorenzo de' Medici's life was 
attempted by Batista Frescobaldi in the Carmine (see 1st. Fior. book 
viii. near the end). The Baglioni of Perugia were to have been mas- 
sacred during the marriacre festival of Astorre with Lavinia Colonna 



398 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

was to be the signal. Both the Medici arrived. The 
murderers embraced Giullano and disco\ered that 
this timid youth had left his secret coat of mail at 
home. But a difficulty, which ought to have been 
foreseen, arose. Montesecco, cut-throat as he was, 
refused to stab Lorenzo before the high altar: at 
the last moment some sense of the religio loci 
dashed his courage. Two priests were then dis- 
covered who had no such silly scruples. In the 
words of an old chronicle, * Another man was found, 
who, being a priest y was more accustomed to the 
place and therefore less superstitious about its sanc- 
tity.' This, however, spoiled all. The priests, though 
more sacrilegious than the bravos, were less used to 
the trade of assassination. They failed to strike 
home. Giuliano, it is true, was stabbed to death by 
Bernardo Bandini and Francesco de' Pazzi at the 
very moment of the elevation of Christ's body. But 
Lorenzo escaped with a slight flesh-wound. The 
whole conspiracy collapsed. In the retaliation which 
the infuriated people of Florence took upon the 
murderers, the Archbishop Salviati, together with 
Jacopo and Francesco de' Pazzi and some others 
among the principal conspirators, were hung from 
the windows of the Palazzo Pubblico. For this act 
of violence to the sacred person of a traitorous priest, 
Sixtus, who had upon his own conscience the crime 

(1500J. Stefano Porcari intended to capture Nicholas V. at the great 
gate ot S. Peter's (1453). The only chance of catching cautious 
princ-s off their guard was when they were engaged in high solem- 
nities See above, p, 168. 



PERSECUTION OF THE JEWS. 399 

of mingled treason, sacrilege, and murder, ex-com- 
municated Florence, and carried on for years a savage 
war with the Republic. It was not until 1481, when 
the descent of the Turks upon Otranto made him 
tremble for his own safety, that he chose to make 
peace with these enemies whom he had himself 
provoked and plotted against. 

\ Another peculiarity in the Pontificate of Sixtus de- 
serves special mention. It was under his auspices 
in the year 1478 that the Inquisition was founded 
in Spain for the extermination of Jews, Moors, 
and Christians with a taint of heresy. During 
the next four years 2,000 victims were burned 
in the province of Castile. In Seville, a plot of 
ground, called the Quemadero, or place of burning 
— a new Aceldama — was set apart for executions; 
and here in one year 280 heretics were committed 
to the flames, while 79 were condemned to perpetual 
imprisonment, and 17,000 to lighter punishments of 
various kinds. In Andalusia alone 5, 000 houses were 
at once abandoned by their inhabitants. Then fol- 
lowed In 1492 the celebrated edict against the Jews. 
Before four months had expired the whole Jewish 
population were bidden to leave Spain, carrying with 
them nothing In the shape of gold or silver. To 
convert their property Into bills of exchange and 
movables was their only resource. The market 
speedily was glutted: a house was given for an 
ass, a vineyard for a suit of clothes. Vainly did 
the persecuted race endeavor to purchase a remis- 



400 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

sion of the sentence by the payment of an exorbi- 
tant ransom. Torquemada appeared before Ferdi- 
nand and his consort, raising the crucifix, and 
crying: 'Judas sold Christ for 30 pieces of silver; 
sell ye him for a larger sum, and account for the 
same to God!' The exodus began. Eight hun- 
dred thousand Jews left Spain ^ — some for the coast 
of Africa, where the Arabs ripped their bodies up 
in search for gems or gold they might have swal- 
lowed, and deflowered their women — some for Por- 
tugal, where they bought the right to exist for a 
large head- tax, and where they saw their sons and 
daughters dragged away to baptism before their 
eyes. Others were sold as slaves, or had to sat- 
isfy the rapacity of their persecutors with the bodies 
of their children. Many flung themselves into the 
wells, and sought to bury despair in suicide. The 
Mediterranean was covered with famine-stricken and 
plague-breeding fleets of exiles. Putting into the 
Port of Genoa, they were refused leave to reside 
in the city, and died by hundreds in the harbor.* 
Their festering bodies bred a pestilence along the 
whole Italian sea-board, of which at Naples alone 
20,000 persons died. Flitting from shore to shore, 
these forlorn specters, the victims of bigotry and 



^ This number is perhaps exaggerated. Limborch in his History 
of the Inquisition (p. 83) gives both 8oo,cxx) and 400,000; he also 
speaks of 1^0,000 families as one calculation. 

» Senarega's account of the entry of the Jews into Genoa is truly 
awful. He was an eye-witness of what he relates. The passage 
may be read in Prescott's Ferdinand and Isabella, chapter 17. 



DEPOPULATION OF SPAIN. 4OI 

avarice, everywhere pillaged and everywhere re- 
jected, dwindled away and disappeared. Mean- 
while the orthodox rejoiced. Pico della Mirandola, 
who spent his life in reconciling Plato with the 
Cabala, finds nothing more to say than this : * The 
sufferings of the Jews, in which the glory of the 
Divine justice delighted, were so extreme as to 
fill us Christians with commiseration.' With these 
words we may compare the following passage from 
Senarega : * The matter at first sight seemed praise- 
worthy, as regarding the honor done to our religion; 
yet it involved some amount of cruelty, if we look 
upon them, not as beasts, but as men, the handi- 
work of God.' A critic of this century can only 
exclaim with stupefaction : Tantum religio potuii 
suadere malorum! Thus Spain began to devour 
and depopulate herself. The curse which fell upon 
the Jew and Moor descended next upon philosopher 
and patriot. The very life of the nation, in its com- 
merce, its industry, its free thought, its energy of 
character, was deliberately and steadily throttled. 
And at no long interval of time the blight of Spain 
was destined to descend on Italy, paralyzing the 
fair movements of her manifold existence to a rigid 
uniformity, shrouding the light and color of her art 
and letters in the blackness of inquisitorial gloom. 
Most singular is the attitude of a Sixtus — indulg- 
j Jng his lust and pride in the Vatican, adorning the 
' chapel called after his name with masterpieces,^ rend- 

i^ > Musing beneath the Sibyls and before the Judgment of Michael 
I AogelOi it is difficult not to picture to the fancy the arraignment of 



402 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

ing Italy with broils for the aggrandizement of favor- 
ites, haggling over the prices to be paid for bishop- 
rics, extorting money from starved provinces, plotting 
murder against his enemies, hounding the semi-bar- 
barous Swiss mountaineers on Milan by indulgences, 
refusing aid to Venice in her championship of Chris- 
tendom against the Turk — yet meanwhile thinking 
to please God by holocausts of Moors, by myriads 
of famished Jews, conferring on a faithless and ava- 
ricious Ferdinand the title of Catholic, endeavoring 
to wipe out his sins by the blood of others, to burn 
his own vices in the autos da fe of Seville, and by 
the foundation of that diabolical engine the Inquisi- 
tion to secure the fabric his own infamy was under- 
mining.i This is not the language of a Protestant 
denouncing the Pope. With all respect for the Ro- 
man Church, that Alma Mater of the Middle Ages, 
that august and venerable monument of immemorial 
antiquity, we cannot close our eyes to the contradic- 

the Popes who built and beautified that chapel, when the Christ, 
whose blood they sold, should appear with His menacing right arm 
uplifted, and the prophets should thunder their denunciations: ' Howl, 
ye shepherds, and cry; and wallow yourselves in the ashes, ye prin- 
cipal of the flock, for the days of your slaughter and your dispersions 
ure accomplished.* 

«_:The same incongruity appears also in Innocent VIII., whose 
bull against witchcraft (1484) systematized the persecution directed 
against unfortunate old women and idiots. Sprenger, in the Malleus 
Maleficarujn, mentions that in the first year after its publication 
forty-one witches were burned in the district of Como, while crowds 
of suspected women took refuge in the province of the Archduke Sig- 
ismond. Canto's Storia della Dioccsi di Como (Le Monnier, 2 vols.) 
may be consulted for the persecution of witches in Valtellina and Val 
Camonica. Cp. Folengo's Maccaronea for the prevalence of witch- 
craft in those districts. 



INNOCENT VIII, 403 

tions between practice and pretension upon which the 
History of the Italian Renaissance throws a light so 
lurid. 

After Sixtus IV. came Innocent VIII. His secu- 
lar name was Giambattista Cibo. The sacred Col- 
lege, terrified by the experience of Sixtus into 
thinking that another Pope, so reckless in his 
creation of scandalous Cardinals, might ruin Chris- 
tendom, laid the most solemn obligations on the 
Pope elect. Cibo took oaths on every relic, by 
every saint, to every member of the conclave, that 
he would maintain a certain order of appointment 
and a purity of election in the Church. No Car- 
dinal under the age of thirty, not more than one of 
the Pope's own blood, none without the rank of 
Doctor of Theology or Law, were to be elected, 
and so forth. But as soon as the tiara was on his 
head, he renounced them all as inconsistent with the 
rights and liberties of S. Peter's Chair. Engage- 
ments made by the man might always be broken 
by the Pope. Of Innocent's Pontificate little need 
be said. He was the first Pope publicly to ac- 
knowledge his seven children, and to call them 
sons and daughters.^ Avarice, venality, sloth, and 
the ascendency of base favorites made his reign 
loathsome without the blaze and splendor of the 
scandals of his fiery predecessor. In corruption he 

« 'Primus pontificum filios filiasque palam ostentavit, primus 

eonim apertas fecit nuptias, primus domesticos hiymenseos celebravit.' 
Egidius of \'itc'rl)o, quoted by Grn j. Sfadt Rom, vol. vii. p. 274, note. 



404 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

advanced a step* even beyond Sixtus, by establish- 
ing a Bank at Rome for the sale of pardons.^ Each 
sin had its price, which might be paid at the con- 
venience of the criminal: i5o ducats of the tax were 
poured into the Papal coffers; the surplus fell to 
Franceschetto, the Pope's son. This insignificant 
princeling, for whom the county of Anguillara was 
purchased, showed no ability or ambition for aught 
but getting and spending money. He was small 
of stature and tame-spirited: yet the destinies of 
an important house of Europe depended on him; 
for his father married him to Maddalena, the daugh- 
ter of Lorenzo de' Medici, in 1487. This led to 
Giovanni de' Medici receiving a Cardinal s hat at 
the age of thirteen, and thus the Medicean interest 
in Rome was founded; in the course of a few years 
the Medici gave two Popes to the Holy See, and 
by their ecclesiastical influence riveted the chains 
of Florence fast.^ The traffic which Innocent and 
Franceschetto carried on in theft and murder filled 

» Infessura says he heard the Vice-Chancellor, when asked why 
crin\inals were allowed to pay instead of being punished, answer: 
' God wills not the death of a sinner, but rather that he should pay 
and live.' Dominico di Viterbo, Apostolic Scribe, forged bulls by 
vviiich the Pope granted indulgences for the commission of the worst 
scandals. His father tried to buy him off for 5,000 ducats. Inno- 
cent replied that, as his honor was concerned, he must have 6,000. 
The poor father could not scrape so much money together; so the 
bargain fell through, and Dominico was executed. A Roman who 
bad killed two of his own daughters bought his pardon for 800 
ducats. 

« Guicciardini, i. i., points out that Lo'^nzo, having the Pope for 
his ally, was able to create that balance of power in Italy which it 
was his chief political merit to have maintained until his death. 



LAST DAYS OF INNOCENT, 405 

the Campagna with brigands and assassins.^ Trav- 
elers ard pilgrims and ambassadors were stripped 
and m irdered on their way to Rome; and in the 
city it'^elf more than two hundred people were pub 
licly assassinated with impunity during the last months 
of the Pope's life. He was gradually dozing off into 
his last long sleep, and Franceschetto was planning 
how to carry off his ducats. While the Holy Fa- 
ther still hovered between life and death, a Jewish 
doctor proposed to reinvigorate him by the trans- 
fusion of young blood into his torpid veins. Three 
boys throbbing with the elixir of early youth were 
sacrificed in vain. Each boy, says Infessura, re- 
ceived one ducat. He adds, not without grim hu- 
mor: ' Et paulo post mortui sunt; Judaeus quidem 
aufugit, et Papa non sanatus est.' The epitaph of 
this poor old Pope reads like a rather clever but 
blasphemous witticism: ' Ego autem in Innocentia 
mea ingressus sum.' 

Meanwhile the Cardinals had not been idle. The 
tedious leisure of Innocent's long lethargy was em- 
ployed by them in active simony. Simony, it may 
be said in passing, gave the great Italian families a 
direct interest in the election of the richest and most 
paying candidate. It served the turn of a man like 
Ascanio Sforza to fatten the golden goose that laid 
such eggs, before he killed it — in other words, to 



* It is only by reading the pages of Infessura's Diary (Eccardus 
vol. ii. pp. 2003-2005) that any notion of the mixed debauchery and 
violence of Rome at this time can be formed. 



4o6 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

take the bribes of Innocent and Alexander, while 
deferring for a future time his own election. All 
the Cardinals, with the exception of Roderigo Bor- 
gia,i were the creatures of Sixtus or of Innocent. 
Having bought their hats with gold, they were 
now disposed to sell their votes to the highest bid- 
der. The Borgia \ias the richest, strongest, wisest, 
and most worldly of them all. He ascertained ex- 
actly what the price of each suffrage would be, and 
laid his plans accordingly. The Cardinal Ascanio 
Sforza, brother of the Duke of Milan, would accept 
the lucrative post of Vice- Chancellor. The Cardinal 
Orsini would be satisfied with the Borgia Palaces at 
Rome and the Castles of Monticello and Saviano. 
The Cardinal Colonna had a mind for the Abbey 
of Subbiaco with its fortresses. The Cardinal of S. 
Angelo preferred the comfortable Bishopric of Porto 
with its palace stocked with choice wines. The Car- 
dinal of Parma would take Nepi. The Cardinal of 
Genoa was bribable with the Church of S. Maria in 
Via Lata. Less influential members of the Conclave 
sold themselves for gold; to meet their demands the 
Borgia sent Ascanio Sforza four mules laden with 
coin in open day, requesting him to distribute it in 
proper portions to the voters. The fiery Giuliano 
della Rovere remained implacable and obdurate. In 



» Roderigo was the son of Isabella Borgia, niece of Pope Calix- 
tus III., by her marriage with Joflfr^ Lenzuoli. He took the name of 
Borgia, when he came to Rome to be made Cardinal, and to shar • 
in his uncK:':^ ureaUiess. 



ELECTION OF ALEXANDER VI. 407 

the Borgia his vehement temperament perceived a fit 
antagonist The armor which he donned in their 
first encounters he never doffed, but waged fierce 
war with the whole brood of Borgias at Ostia, at 
the French Court, in Romagna, wherever and when- 
ever he found opportunity.^ He and five other Car- 
dinals — among them his cousin Raphael Riario — re- 
fused to sell their votes. But Roderigo Borgia, 
having corrupted the rest of the college, assumed 
the mantle of S. Peter in 1492, with the ever-mem- 
orable title of Alexander VI. 

"^ Rome rejoiced. The Holy City attired herself 
in festival array, exhibiting on every flag and balcony 
the Bull of the house of Borgia, and crying like the 
Iigyptians when they found Apis : — 

Vive diu Bos ! Vive diu Bos ! Borgia vive ! 
Vivit Alexander : Roma beata manet. 

In truth there was nothing to convince the Romans 
of the coming woe, or to raise suspicion that a Pope 
had been elected who would deserve the execration 
of succeeding centuries. In Roderigo Borgia the 
people only saw, as yet, a man accomplished at all 
points, of handsome person, royal carriage, majestic 
presence, affable address. He was a brilliant orator, 
a passionate lover, a demigod of court pageantry 
and ecclesiastic parade — qualities which, though they 

' The marriage of his nephew Nicolo della Rovere to Laura, tlie 
daughter of Alexander VI. by Giulia Bella, in 1505, long after the 
Borgia family had lost its hold on Italy, is a curious and unexplained 
incident. 



4^8 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

do not suit our notions of a churchman, imposed 
upon the taste of the Renaissance. As he rode in 
triumph toward the Lateran, voices were loud in his 
praise. ' He sits upon a snow-white horse,' writes 
one of the humanists of the century ,i ' with serene 
forehead, with commanding dignity. As he distrib- 
utes his blessing to the crowd, all eyes are fixed upon 
him, and all hearts rejoice. How admirable is the 
mild composure of his mien! how noble his coun- 
tenance! his glance how free! His stature and car- 
riage, his beauty and the full health of his body, how 
they enhance the reverence which he Inspires ! ' An- 
other panegyrist 2 describes his 'broad forehead, kingly 
brow, free countenance full of majesty,' adding that 
* the heroic beauty of his whole body ' was given him 
by nature In order that he might * adorn the seat of 
the Apostles with his divine form In the place of God.' 
How little in the early days of his Pontificate the 
Borgia resembled that Alexander with whom the 
legend of his subsequent life has familiarized our 
fancy, may be gathered from the following account : ^ 
*He is handsome, of a most glad countenance and 
joyous aspect, gifted with honeyed and choice elo- 
quence ; the beautiful women on whom his eyes are 
cast he lures to love him, and moves them in a won- 
drous way, more powerfully than the magnet influ- 
ences iron.' These, we must remember, are the 



» See Michael Femus, quoted by Greg. Lucresta Borgia, p. 45 

Jason Mainus, quoted by Greg. Stadt Ro?n. p. 314, note. 
• Gasp. Ver., quoted by Greg. Sfa.fi Rom. p. ?n?. note. 



PERSONALITY OF ALEXANDER, 409 

testimonies of men of letters, imbued with the Pagan 
sentiments of the fifteenth century, and rejoicing in 
the advent of a Pope who would, they hoped, make 
Rome the capital of luxury and license. Therefore 
they require to be received with caution. Yet there 
is no reason to suppose that the majority of the 
Italians regarded the elevation of the Borgia with 
peculiar horror. As a Cardinal he had given proof 
of his ability, but shown no signs of force or cruelty 
or fraud. Nor were his morals worse than those of 
his colleagues. If he was the father of several chil- 
dren, so was Giuliano della Rovere, and so had been 
Pope Innocent before him. This mattered but little 
in an age when the Primate of Christendom had come 
to be regarded as a secular potentate, less fortunate 
than other princes inasmuch as his rule was not 
hereditary, but more fortunate in so far as he could 
wield the thunders and dispense the privileges of the 
Church. A few men of discernment knew what had 
been done, and shuddered. * The king of Naples,* 
says Guicciardini, * though he dissembled his grief, 
told the queen, his wife, with tears — tears which he 
was wont to check even at the death of his own sons 
— that a Pope had been made who would prove most 
pestilent to the whole Christian commonwealth.' The 
young Cardinal Giovanni de' Medici, again, showed 
his discernment of the situation by whispering in the 
Conclave to his kinsman Cibo : ' We are in the wolfs 
jaws; he will gulp us down, unless we make our 
flight good.' Besides, there was in Italy a widely 



4IO RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

spread repugnance to the Spanish intruders — Marrani, 
or renegade Moors, as they were properly called — 
who crowded the Vatican and threatened to possess 
the land of their adoption like conquerors. ' Ten 
Papacies would not suffice to satiate the greed of all 
this kindred,' wrote Giannandrea Boccaccio to the 
Duke of Ferrara in 1492 : and events proved that 
these apprehensions were justified; for during the 
Pontificate of Alexander eighteen Spanish Cardinals 
were created, five of whom belonged to the house 
of the Borgias. 

It is certain, however, that the profound horror 
with which the name of Alexander VI. strikes a 
modern ear was not felt among the Italians at the 
time of his election. The sentiment of hatred with 
which he was afterwards regarded arose partly from 
the crimes by which his Pontificate was rendered in- 
famous, pardy from the fear which his son Cesare 
inspired, and partly from the mysteries of his private 
life, which revolted even the corrupt conscience of 
the sixteenth century. This sentiment of hatred had 
grown to universal execration at the date of his death. 
In course of time, when the attention of the North- 
ern nations had been directed to the iniquities of 
Rome, and when the glaring discrepancy between 
Alexander's pretension as a Pope and his conduct 
as a man had been apprehended, it inspired a 
legend which, like all legends, distorts the facts 
which it reflects. 

' Alexander was, in tnilh. a man eminent! v fitted 



LEGEND OF THE BORGIA, 4II 

to close an old age and to inaugurate a new, to dem- 
onstrate the paradoxical situation of the Popes b> 
the inexorable logic of his practical impiety, and to 
fuse two conflicting world-forces in the cynicism of 
supreme corruption. The Emperors of the Julian 
house had exhibited the extreme of sensual inso- 
lence in their autocracy. What they desired of 
strange and sweet and terrible in the forbidden 
fruits of lust, they had enjoyed. The Popes of the 
Middle Ages — Hildebrand and Boniface — had dis 
played the extreme of spiritual insolence in theii 
theocracy. What they desired of tyrannous and 
forceful in the exercise of an usurped despotism 
over souls, they had enjoyed. The Borgia com- 
bined both impulses toward the illimitable. Tc 
describe him as the Genius of Evil, whose sensu- 
alities, as unrestrained as Nero's, were relieved 
against the background of flame and smoke which 
Christianity had raised for fleshly sins, is justifiable 
His spiritual tyranny, that arrogated Jus, by righ; 
of which he claimed the hemisphere revealed by 
Christopher Columbus, and imposed upon the press* 
of Europe the censure of the Church of Rome, was 
rendered ten times monstrous by the glare reflected 
on it from the unquenched furnace of a godless life. 
The universal conscience of Christianity is revolted 
by those unnamable delights, orgies of blood and 
festivals of lust, which were enjoyed in the pleni- 
tude of his green and vigorous old age by this ver- 
satile diplomatist and subtle priest, who controlled 



4 If RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

the councils of kings, and who chanted the sacra- 
mental service for a listening world on Easter Day 
in Rome. Rome has never been small or weak or 
mediocre. And now in the Pontificate of Alexander 
* that memorable scene ' presented to the nations of 
the modern world a pageant of Antichrist and Anti- 
physis — ^the negation of the Gospel and of nature; 
a glaring spectacle of discord between humanity 
as it aspires to be at its best, and humanity as 
it is at its worst; a tragi-comedy composed by 
some infernal Aristophanes, in which the servant of 
servants, the anointed of the Lord, the lieutenant 
upon earth of Christ, played the chief part. It may 
be objected that this is the language not of history 
but of the legend. I reply that there are occasions 
when the legend has caught the spirit of the truth. 
■ Alexander was a stronger and a firmer man than 
his immediate predecessors. * He combined,* says 
Guicciardini, 'craft with singular sagacity, a sound 
judgment with extraordinary powers of persuasion; 
and to all the grave affairs of life he applied ability 
and pains beyond belief.'^ His first care was to re- 

» It is but fair to Guicciardini to complete his sentence in a note: 
•These good qualities were far surpassed by his vices; private habits 
of the utmost obscenity, no shame nor sense of truth, no fidelity to 
his engagements, no religious sentiment; insatiable avarice, un- 
bridled ambition, cruelty beyond the cruelty of barbarous races, 
burning desire to elevate his sons by any means: of these there were 
many, and among them — in order that he might not lack vicious in- 
struments for effecting his vicious schemes — one not less detestable 
in any way than his father.' St. cm. vol. i. p. 9. I shall translate 
and put into the appendix Guicciardini's character of Alexander from 
the Storia di Firenze. 



ALEXANDER'S POLICY. 413 

duce Rome to order. The old factions of Colonna 
and Orsini, which Sixtus had scotched, but which had 
raised their heads again during the dotage of Inno- 
cent, were destroyed in his Pontificate. In this way, 
as Machiavelli observed,^ he laid the real basis for the 
lemporal power of the Papacy. Alexander, indeed, 
as a sovereign, achieved for the Papal See what Louis 
XL had done for the throne of France, and made 
Rome on its small scale follow the type of the large 
European monarchies. The faithlessness and perju- 
ries of the Pope, ' who never did aught else but de- 
ceive, nor ever thought of anything but this, and al- 
ways found occasion for his frauds,' ^ when combined 
with his logical intellect and persuasive eloquence, 
made him a redoubtable antagonist. All considera- 
tions of religion and morality were subordinated by 
him with strict impartiality to policy: and his policy 
he restrained to two objects — the advancement of his 
family, and the consolidation of the temporal power. 
These were narrow aims for the ambition of a poten- 
tate who with one stroke of his pen pretended to con- 
fer the new-found world on Spain. Yet they taxed his 
whole strength, and drove him to the perpetration of 
enormous crimes. 

\ Former Pontiffs had raised money by the sale of 
beaefices and indulgences: this, of course, Alexander 
also practiced — to such an extent, indeed, that an epi- 

1 In the sentences which close the nth chapter of the Prince. 

2 Mach. Prince, oh. xvii. In the Satires of Ariosto (Satire i. 
208-27) there is a brilliant and singularly outspoken passage on th« 
nepotism of the Popes and its ruinous results for Italy. 



n4 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

gram gained currency: 'Alexander sells the keys, the 
altars, Christ. Well, he bought them; so he has a 
right to sell them.' But he went further and took les- 
sons from Tiberius. Having sold the scarlet to the 
highest bidder, he used to feed his prelate with rich 
benefices. When he had fattened him sufficiently, he 
poisoned him, laid hands upon his hoards, and recom- 
menced the game. Paolo Capello, the Venetian Am- 
bassador, wrote in the year i5oo: ' Every night they 
find in Rome four or five murdered men. Bishops and 
Prelates and so forth.' Panvinius mentions three Car- 
dinals who were known to have been poisoned by the 
Pope; and to their names may be added those of the 
Cardinals of Capua and of Verona.^ To be a prince 
of the Church was dangerous in those days; and if the 
Borgia had not at last poisoned himself by mistake, he 
must in the long-run have had to pay people to accept 
so perilous a privilege. His traffic in Church dignities 
was carried on upon a grand scale: twelve Cardinals' 
hats, for example, were put to auction in a single day 
in 1 5oo.2 This was when he wished to pack the Con- 
clave with votes in favor of the cession of Romagna to 
Cesare Borgia, as well as to replenish his exhausted 
coffers. Forty-three Cardinals were created by him 
in eleven promotions: each of these was worth on an 
average 10,000 florins; while the price paid by Fran- 
cesco Soderini amounted to 20,000 and that paid by 
Domenico Grimani reached the sum of 30,000. 

' See the authorities in Burckhardt, pp. 93, 94. 
• Guicc. St. d It. vol. iii. n. i :;. 



ALEXANDER AND THE SULTAN, 415 

Former Popes had preached crusades against 
the Turk, languidly or energetically according as 
the coasts of Italy were threatened. Alexander fre- 
quendy invited Bajazet to enter Europe and relieve 
him of the princes who opposed his intrigues in the 
favor of his children. The fraternal feeling which 
subsisted between the Pope and the Sultan was to 
some extent dependent on the fate of Prince Djem, a 
brother of Bajazet and son of the conqueror of Con- 
stantinople, who had fled for protection to the Chris- 
tian powers, and whom the Pope kept prisoner, re- 
ceiving 40,000 ducats yearly from the Porte for his 
jail fee. Innocent VIII. had been the first to snare 
this lucrative guest in 1489. The Lance of Longinus 
was sent him as a token of the Sultan's gratitude, 
and Innocent, who built an altar for the relique, 
caused his own tomb to be raised close by. His 
effigy in bronze by Pollajuolo still carries in its hand 
this blood-gift from the infidel to the High Priest of 
Christendom. 

Djem meanwhile remained in Rome, and held 
his Moslem Court side by side with the Pontiff in 
the Vatican. Dispatches are extant in which Ale 
ander and Bajazet exchange terms of the war 
est friendship, the Turk imploring his Greatness 
so he addressed the Pope — to put an end to the 
unlucky Djem, and promising as the price of this 
assassination a sum of 300,000 ducats and the tunic 
worn by Christ, presumably that very seamless coat 
over which the soldiers of Calvary had cast their 



4l6 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

dice.^ The money and the relique arrived in Italy 
and were intercepted by the partisans of Giuliano 
della Rovere. Alexander, before the bargain with 
the Sultan had been concluded by the murder of 
Djem, was forced to hand him over to the French 
king. But the unlucky Turk carried in his con- 
stitution the slow poison of the Borgias, and died in 
Charles's camp between Rome and Naples. What- 
ever crimes may be condoned in Alexander, it is 
difficult to extenuate this traffic with the Turks. By 
his appeal from the powers of Europe to the Sultan, 
at a time when the peril to the Western world was 
still most serious, he stands attained for high treason 
against Christendom, of which he professed to be the 
chief; against civilization, which the Church pre- 
tended to protect; against Christ, whose vicar he 
presumed to style himself. 

Like Sixtus, Alexander combined this deadness 
to the spirit and the interests of Christianity with zeal 
for dogma. He never flinched in formal orthodoxy, 
and the measures which he took for riveting the 
chains of superstition on the people were calculated 
with the military firmness of a Napoleon. It was he 
who established the censure of the press, by which 
printers were obliged, under pain of excommunica- 
tion, to submit the books they issued to the control 
of the Archbishops and their delegates. The Brief 
of June I, i5oi, which contains this order, may be 

' See the letters in the 'Preuves et Observations,' printed at th* 

*i.\\^X oi uic Meinoirds de Coinuies. 



A POPE'S HAREM. 41? 

reasonably said to have retarded civilization, at least 
In Italy and Spain. 

.Carnal sensuality was the besetting vice of this 
Pope throughout his life.^ This, together with his 
almost insane weakness for his children, whereby 
he became a slave to the terrible Cesare, caused all 
the crimes which he committed. At the same time, 
though sensual, Alexander was not gluttonous. Boc- 
caccio, the Ferrarese Ambassador, remarks : * The 
Pope eats only of one dish. It is, therefore, disa- 
greeable to have to dine with him.' In this respect 
he may be favorably contrasted with the Roman 
prelates of the age of Leo. His relations to Van- 
nozza Catanei, the titular wife first of Giorgio de 
Croce, and then of Carlo Canale, and to Giulia 
Farnese,^ surnamed La Bella, the titular wife of 

' Guicciardini {St. Fior. cap. 27) writes: ' Fu lussoriosissimo nell' 
uno e neir altro sesso, tenendo publicamente femine e garzoni, ma 
piu ancora nelle femine.' A notion of the public disorders connected 
with his dissolute life may be gained from this passage in Sanuto's 
Diary (Gregorovius, Lucrezia Borgia, p. 88): 'Da Roma per le let- 
tere del orator nostro se intese et etiam de private persone cossa assai 
abominevole in le chiesa di Dio, che al papa erra nato un fiolo di una 
dona romana maritata, ch' el padre 1* havea rufianata, e di questa il 
marito invito il suocero a la vigna e lo uccise tagliandoli el capo, 
ponendo quelle sopra uno legno con letere che diceva questo 6 il 
capo de mio suocero che a rufianato sua fiola al papa, et che inteso 
questo il papa fece metter el dito in exilio di Roma con taglia. 
Questa nova venne per letere particular; etiam si godea con la sua 
spagnola menatali per suo fiol duca di Gandia novamente li \enuto.* 

* Her brother Alexander, afterwards Paul III., owed his promo- 
tion to the purple to this liaison, which was, therefore, the origin of 
the greatness of the Farnesi. The tomb of Paul III. in the Tribune 
of S. Peter's has three notable family portraits — the Pope himself in 
bronze; his sister Giulia, naked in marble, as Justice; and their old 
mother, Giovanna Gaetani, the bawd, as Prudence. 



4l8 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

Orsino Orsini, were open and acknowledged. These 
two sultanas ruled him during the greater portion 
of his career, conniving meanwhile at the harem, 
which, after truly Oriental fashion, he maintained in 
the Vatican. An incident which happened during 
the French invasion of 1494 brings the domestic 
circumstances of a Pope of the Renaissance vividly 
before us. Monseigneur d'Allegre caught the ladles 
Giulia and Girolama Farnese, together with the lady 
Adrlana de Mila, who was employed as their duenna, 
near Capodimonte, on November 29, and carried 
them to Montefiascone. The sum fixed for their 
ransom was 3,000 ducats. This the Pope paid, and 
on December i they were released. Alexander met 
them outside Rome, attired like a layman in a black 
jerkin trimmed with gold brocade, and fastened round 
his waist by a Spanish girdle, from which hung his 
dagger. Lodovico Sforza, when he heard what had 
happened, remarked that it was weak to release these 
ladies, who were 'the very eyes and heart* of his 
Holiness, for so small a ransom — if 5o,ooo ducats had 
been demanded, they would have been paid. This 
and a few similar jokes, uttered at the Pope's ex- 
pense, make us understand to what extent the Italians 
were accustomed to regard their high priest as a 
secular prince. Even the pageant of Alexander 
seated in S. Peter's, with his daughter Lucrezia on 
one side of his throne and his daughter-in-law Sancia 
upon the other, moved no moral indignation ; nor 
were the Romans astonished wlien Lucrezia was 



LUCREZIA BORGIA. 4I(> 

appointed Governor of Spoleto, and plenipotentiary 
Regent of the Vatican in her father's absence. These 
scandals, however, created a very different impres- 
sion in the north, and prepared the way for the 
Reformation. 

• The nepotism of Sixtus was like water to the 
strong wine of Alexander's paternal ambition. The 
passion of paternity, exaggerated beyond the bounds 
of natural affection, and scandalous in a Roman Pon- 
tiff, was the main motive of the Borgia's action. Of 
his children by Vannozza, he caused the eldest son 
to be created Duke of Gandia; the youngest he. mar- 
ried to Donna Sancia, a daughter of Alfonso of Ara- 
gon, by whom the boy was, honored with the Duke- 
dom of Squillace. Cesare, the second of this family, 
was appointed Bishop of Valentia, and Cardinal. The 
Dukedoms of Camerino and Nepi were given to 
another John, whom Alexander first declared to be 
his grandson through Cesare, and afterwards ac- 
knowledged as his son. This John may possibly 
have been Lucrezia's child. The Dukedom of Ser- 
moneta, wrenched for a moment from the hands of 
the Gaetani family, who still own it, was conferred 
upon Lucrezia's son, Roderigo. Lucrezia, the only 
daughter of Alexander by Vannozza, took three hus- 
bands in succession, after having been formally be- 
trothed to two Spanish nobles, Don Cherubino Juan 
de Centelles, and Don Gasparo da Procida, son of 
the Count of A versa. These contracts, made before 
her father became Pope, were annulled as not mag- 



430 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

nificent enough for. the Pontiff s daughter. In 1492 
she was married to Giovanni Sforza, Lord of Pesaro. 
But in 1497 the pretensions of the Borgais had out- 
grown this alliance, and their public policy was in- 
clining to relations with the Southern Courts of Italy. 
Accordingly she was divorced and given to Alfonso, 
Prince of Biseglia, a natural son of the King of Na- 
ples. When this man's father lost his crown, the Bor- 
gias, not caring to be connected with an ex -royal fam- 
ily, caused Alfonso to be stabbed on the steps of S. 
Peter's in i5oi; and while he lingered between life 
and death, they had him strangled in his sick-bed, by 
Michellozzo, Cesare's assassin in chief. Finally Lu- 
crezia was wedded to Alfonso, crown-prince of Ferrara, 
in i5o2.^ The proud heir of the Este dynasty was 
forced by policy, against his inclination, to take to his 
board and bed a Pope's bastard, twice divorced, once 
severed from her husband by murder, and soiled, 
whether justly or not, by atrocious rumors, to which 
her father's and her brother's conduct gave but too 
much color. She proved a model princess after all, 
and died at last in childbirth, after having been praised 
by Ariosto as a second Lucrece, brighter for her vir- 
tues than the star of regal Rome. 

History has at last done justice to tne memory of 
this woman, whose long yellow hair was so beautiful, 
and whose character was so colorless. The legend 

> Her dowry was 300,000 ducats, besiaes wedding presents, and 
certain important immunities and privileges granted to Ferrara by 
riie Pope. 



LUCRE ZI A AT FERRARA. 42 1 

which made her a poison-brewing Maenad has been 
proved a lie — but only at the expense of the whole 
society in which she lived. The simple northern 
folk, familiar with the tales of Chriemhild, Brynhild, 
and Gudrun, who helped to forge this legend, :ould 
not understand that a woman should be irresponsible 
for all the crimes and scandals perpetrated in her 
name. Yet it seems now clear enough that not 
hers, but her father's and her brother's, were the 
atrocities which made her married life in Rome a 
byword. She sat and smiled through all the tem- 
pests which tossed her to and fro, until she found at 
last a fair port in the Duchy of Ferrara. Nursed in 
the corruption of Papal Rome, which Lorenzo de' 
Medici described to his son Giovanni as * a sink of 
all the vices,' consorting habitually with her father's 
concubines, and conscious that her own mother had 
been married for show to two successive husbands, 
it is not possible that Lucrezia ruled her conduct at 
any time with propriety. It is even probable that 
the darkest tales about her are true. The Lord of 
Pesaro, we must remember, told his kinsman, the 
Duke of Milan, that the assigned reasons for his 
divorce were false, and that the fact was what can 
scarcely be recorded.^ Still, there is no ground for 



The whole question of Lucrezia's guilt has been ably investi- 
gated by Gregorovius {Lucrezia Borgia, pp. loi, 159-64). Charity 
suggests that the dreadful tradition of her relation to her father ana 
brothers is founded less upon fact than upon the scandals current 
after her divorce. What Giovanni Sforza said was this: * anzi hav- 
trla conosciuta infinite volte, ma did Pa/)a non gel ha tolta fiet 



422 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

supposing that, in the matter of her first husband's 
divorce and the second's murder, she was more than 
a passive agent in the hands of Alexander and Ce- 
sare. The pleasure-loving, careless woman of the 
Renaissance is very different from the Medea of 
Victor Hugo's romance; and what remains most 
revolting to the modern conscience in her conduct 
is complacent acquiescence in scenes of debauchery 
devised for her amusement.^ Instead of viewing 
her with dread as a potent and malignant witch, 
we have to regard her with contempt as a feeble 
woman, soiled with sensual foulness from the cra- 
dle. It is also due to truth to remember that at 
Ferrara she won the esteem of a husband who 
had married her unwillingly, attached the whole 
state to her by her sweetness of temper, and re- 
ceived the panegyrics of the two Strozzi, Bembo, 
Ariosto, Aldo Manuzio, and many other men of 

altro se no n per usare con lei' This confession of the injured hus- 
band went the round of all the Courts of Italy, was repeated by Mal- 
ipiero and Paolo Capello, formed the suDstance of the satires of San- 
nazaro and Pontano, crept into the chronicle of Matarazzo, and 
survived in the histories of Machiavelli and Guicciardini. There 
was nothing in his words to astonish men who were cognizant of the 
acts of Gianpaolo Baglioni and Sigismondo Malatesta; while the 
frantic passion of Alexander for his children, closely allied as this 
feeling was in him to excessive sensuality, gave them confirmatior 
Were they, however, true; or were they a malevolent lie? That i. 
the real point at issue. Psychological speculation will help but little 
here. It is true that Lucrezia in after-life showed all the signs of a 
clear conscience. But so also did Alexander, whose buoyancy ot 
spirits lasted till the very day of his death. Yet he was stained with 
crimes foul enough to darken the conscience of any man, at an) 
period of life, and in any position. 

» See Burchard, ed. Leibnitz, pp. 77 and 78. 



CRIMES AT FERRARA. 433 

note. Foreigners who saw her surrounded by her 
brilliant Court exclaimed, like the French biographer 
of Bayard: 'J'ose bien dire que, de son temps, ni 
beau coup avant, il ne s'est point trouve de plus 
triomphante princesse; car elle etait belle, bonne, 
douce; et courtoise a toutes gens.' 

Yet even at Ferrara tragedies which might re- 
mind her of the Vatican continued to surround her 
path. Alfonso, rude in manners and devoted to gun- 
foundry, interfered but little with the life she led 
among the wits and scholars who surrounded her. 
One day, however, in i5o8, the poet Ercole Strozzi, 
who had sung her praises, was found dead, wrapped 
in his mantle, and pierced with two - and - twenty 
wounds. No judicial inquiry into this murder was 
made. Rumor credited both Alfonso and Lucrezia 
with the deed — Alfonso, because he might be jeal- 
ous of his wife — Lucrezia, because her poet had 
recently married Barbara Torelli. Two years ear- 
lier another dark crime at Ferrara brought the name 
of Borgia before the public. One of Lucrezia's ladies, 
Angela Borgia, was courted by both Giulio d* Este 
and the Cardinal Ippolito. The girl praised the eyes 
of Giulio in the hearing of the Cardinal, who forth- 
with hired assassins to mutilate his brother's face 
Giulio escaped from their hands with the loss of 
one of his eyes, and sought justice from the Duke 
against the Cardinal in vain. Thereupon he vowed 
to be revenged on both Ippolito and Alfonso. His 
plot was to murder them, and to place Ferdinand 



424 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

of Este on the throne. The treason was discovered; 
the conspirators appeared before Alfonso: he rushed 
upon Ferdinand, and with his dagger stabbed him 
in the face. Both Giulio and Ferdinand were thrown 
into the dungeons of the palace at Ferrara, where 
they languished for years, while the Duke and Lu- 
crezia enjoyed themselves in its spacious halls and 
su ny loggie among their courtiers. Ferdinand died 
in prison, aged sixty-three, in 1640. Giulio was re- 
leased in 1 559 and died, aged eighty-three, in i56i. 
These facts deserve to be recorded in connection 
with Lucrezia's married life at Ferrara, lest we 
should pay too much attention to the flatteries of 
Ariosto. At the same time her history as Duchess 
consists, for the most part, in the record of the birth 
of children. Like her mother Vannozza, she gave 
herself, in the decline of life, to works of charity 
and mercy. After this fashion the bright and bale- 
ful dames of the Renaissance saved their souls. 

\But to return to the domestic history of Alex- 
ander. The murder of the Duke of Gandia brings 
the whole Borgia family upon the scene. It is re- 
lated with great circumstantiality and with surprising 
sangfroid by Burchard, the Pope's Master of the Cer- 
emonies. The Duke with his brother Cesare, then 
Cardinal Valentino, supped one night at the house 
of their mother Vannozza. On their way home the 
Duke said that he should visit a lady of their ac- 
quaintance. He parted from Cesare and was never 
seen acrain alive. When the news of his disappear- 



DUKE OF GAMBIA'S MURDER. 435 

ance spread abroad, a boatman of the Tiber deposed 
to having watched the body of a man thrown into 
the river on the night of the Duke's deaths the 14th 
of June; he had not thought it worth while to report 
this fact, for he had seen 'a hundred bodies in his 
day thrown into the water at the said spot, and no 
questions asked about them afterwards.' The Pope 
had the Tiber dragged for some hours, while the wits 
of Rome made epigrams upon this true successor of 
S. Peter, this new fisher of men. At last the body 
of the Duke of Gandia was hauled up: nine wounds, 
one in the throat, the others in the head and legs 
and trunk, were found upon the corpse. From the 
evidence accumulated on the subject of the murder 
it appeared that Cesare had planned it; whether, as 
some have supposed, out of a jealousy of his brother 
too dreadful to describe, or, as is more probable, 
because he wished to take the first place in the 
Borgia family, we do not know exactly. The Pon- 
tiff in his rage and grief was like a wild beast driven 
to bay. He shut himself up in a private room, 
refused food, and howled with so terrible a voice 
that it was heard in the streets beyond his palace. 
When he rose up from this agony, remorse seemed 
to have struck him. He assembled a Conclave of 
the Cardinals, wept before them, rent his robes, 
confessed his sins, and instituted a commission for 
the reform of the abuses he had sanctioned in the 
Church. But the storm of anguish spent its strength 
^t last. A visit from Vannozza, the mother of his 



426 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

children, wrought a sudden change from fury to 
reconcilement. What passed between them is not 
known for certain; Vannozza is supposed, however, 
to have pointed out, what was indisputably true, that 
Cesare was more fitted to support the dignity of 
the family by his abilities than had been the weak 
and amiable Duke of Gandia. The miserable father 
rose from the earth, dried his eyes, took food, put 
from him his remorse, and forgot together with his 
grief for Absalom the reforms which he had prom- 
ised for the Church. 

Henceforth he devoted himself with sustained 
energy to building up the fortunes of Cesare, whom 
he released from all ecclesiastical obligations, and to 
whose service he seemed bound by some myste- 
rious power. Nor did he even resent the savage- 
ness and cruelty which this young hell-cat vented 
in his presence on the persons of his favorites. At 
one time Cesare stabbed Perotto, the Pope's minion, 
with his own hand, when the youth had taken refuge 
in Alexander's arms: the blood spirted out upon the 
priestly mantle, and the young man died there.^ At 
another time he employed the same diabolical temper 
for the delectation of his father. He turned out some 
prisoners sentenced to death in a court-yard of the 
palace, arrayed himself in fantastic clothes, and amused 
the papal party by shooting the unlucky criminals. 
They ran round and round the court crouching and 
doubling to avoid his arrows. He showed his skiU 

• The accouiii is _c;iven by Capello, the Venetian envoy. 



POWER OF CESARE, 437 

by hitting each where he thought fit. The Pope 
and Lucrezia looked on applaudingly. Other scenes, 
not of bloodshed, but of groveling sensuality, de- 
vised for the entertainment of his father and his sis- 
ter, though described by the dry pen of Burchard, 
can scarcely be transferred to these pages. 

X The history of Cesare's attempt to found a princi- 
pality belongs properly to another chapter.^ But the 
assistance rendered by his father is essential to the 
biography of Alexander. The vision of an Italian 
sovereignty which Charles of Anjou, Gian Galeazzo 
Visconti, and Galeazzo Maria Sforza had success- 
ively entertained, now fascinated the imagination of 
the Borgias. Having resolved to make Cesare a 
prince, Alexander allied himself with Louis XII. of 
France, promising to annul his first marriage and to 
sanction his nuptials with Ann of Brittany, if he would 
undertake the advancement of his son. This bribe 
induced Louis to create Cesare Duke of Valence and 
to confer on him the hand of Charlotte of Navarre. 
He also entered Italy and with his arms enabled 
Cesare to subdue Romagna. The system adopted 
by Alexander and his son in their conquests was a 
simple one. They took the capitals and murdered 
the princes. Thus Cesare strangled the Varani at 
Camerino in i5o2, and the Vitelli and Orsini at Sini- 
gaglia in the same year: by his means the Marescotti 
had been massacred wholesale in Bologna; Pesaro, 
Rimini, and Forli had been treated in like manner; 

' See Chapter VI. 



428 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

and after the capture of Faenza In i5oi, the two 
young Manfred! had been sent to Rome; where they 
were exposed to the worst Insults, drowned or stran- 
gled.i A system of equal simplicity kept their policy 
alive In foreign Courts. The Bishop of Cette In 
France was poisoned for hinting at a secret of Cesare's 
(1498); the Cardinal d'AmboIse was bribed to main- 
tain the credit of the Borgias with Louis XII. ; the 
offer of a red hat to Brigonnet saved Alexander from 
a general council In 1494. The historical interest of 
Alexander's method consists of its deliberate adapta- 
tion of all the means In his power to one end — the 
elevation of his family. His spiritual authority, the 
wealth of the Church, the honors of the Holy College, 
the arts of an assassin, the diplomacy of a despot, 
were all devoted systematically and openly to the pur- 
pose In view. Whatever could be done to weaken 
Italy by foreign invasions and internal discords, so as 
to render it a prey for his poisonous son, he attempted. 
When Louis XII. made his Infamous alliance with 



Their father, Galeotto Manfredi, had been murdered in 1488 by 
their mother, Francesca Bentivogli. Of Astorre's death Guicciardini 
writes: ' Astorre, che era minore di diciotto anni e di forma eccel- 

lente condotto a Roma, saziata prima (second© che si disse) 

la libidine di qualcuno, fu occultamente insieme con un suo fratello 
naturale privato della vita.' Nardi {Storie Fiorentine, lib. iv. 13) 
credits Cesare with the violation and murder of the boy. How far, 
we may ask, were these dark crimes of violence actuated by astro- 
logical superstition ? This question is raised by Burckhardt (p. 363"* 
apropos of Sigismondo Malatesta's assault upon his son, and Pier 
Luigi Farnese's violation of the Bishop of Fano. To a temperament 
like Alexander's, however, mere lust enhanced by cruelty, and sea 
soned with the joy of insult to an enemy, was a sufficient motive fo» 
the commission of monstrous crime. 



FALL OF THE B ORG IAS. 429 

Ferdinand the Catholic for the spoliation of the house 
of Aragon in Naples, the Pope gladly gave it his 
sanction. The two kings quarreled over their prey: 
tlien Alexander fomented their discord in order that 
Ccsare might have an opportunity of carrying on his 
operations in Tuscany unchecked. Patriotism in his 
breast, whether the patriotism of a born Spaniard or 
the patriotism of an Italian potentate, was as dead as 
Christianity. To make profit for the house of Borgia 
by fraud, sacrilege, and the dismemberment of nations, 
was the Papal policy. 

It is wearisome to continue to the end the cata- 
logue of his misdoings. We are relieved when at 
last the final crash arrives. The. two Borgias, so runs 
the legend of their downfall, invited themselves to 
dine with the Cardinal Adriano of Corneto in a vine- 
yard of the Vatican belonging to their host. Thither 
by the hands of Alexander's butler they previously 
conveyed some poisoned wine. By mistake, or by 
the contrivance of the Cardinal, who may have bribed 
this trusted agent, they drank the death-cup mingled 
for their victim. Nearly all contemporary Italian an- 
nalists, including Guicciardini, Paolo Giovio, and 
Sanudo, gave currency to this version of the trag- 
edy, which became the common property of histo- 
rians, novelists, and moralists.^ Yet Burchard who 
was on the spot, recorded in his diary that both father 
and son were attacked by a malignant fever; and 

» The story is related by Cinthio in his Ecatommithi, Decem- 
ber 9, November 10. 



430 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

Giustiniani wrote to his masters in Venice that the 
Pope's physician ascribed his illness to apoplexy.^ 
The season was remarkably unhealthy, and deaths 
from fever had been frequent. A circular letter to 
the German Princes, written probably by the Cardinal 
of Gurk, and dated August 31, i5o3, distinctly men- 
tioned fever as the cause of the Pope's sudden de- 
cease, ex Iwc seculo horrendA febrium incensione ah- 
sorptumP' Machiavelli, again, who conversed with 
Cesare Borgia about this turning-point in his career, 
gave no hint of poison, but spoke only of son and 
father being simultaneously prostrated by disease. 

At this distance of time, and without further de- 
tails of evidence, we are unable to decide whether Al- 
exander's death was natural, or whether the singularly 
circumstantial and commonly accepted story of the 
poisoned wine contained the truth. On the one side, 
in favor of the hypothesis of fever, we have Burchard's 
testimony, which does not, however, exactly agree 
with Giustiniani's, who reported apoplexy to the 
Venetian senate as the cause of death, and whose 
report, even at Venice, was rejected by Sanudo for 
the hypothesis of poison. On the other side, we 
have the consent of all contemporary historians, with 
the single and, it must be allowed, remarkable excep- 
tion of Machiavelli. Paolo Giovio goes even so far 

> The various accounts of Alexander's death have been epitomized 
by Gregorovius {Stadt Rom, vol. vii.), and have been discussed by 
Villari in his edition of the Giustiniani Dispatches, 2 vols. Florence, 
Le Monnier. Gregorovius thinks the question still open. Villari 
decides in favor of fever against poison. 

* Reprinted by R. GarneLl in .Llhoution, Jan. 16, 1875. 



ALEXANDER'S DEATH. 43 1 

as to assert that the Cardinal Corneto told him he had 
narrowly escaped from the effects of antidotes taken 
in his extreme terror to counteract the possibility of 
poison. 

Whatever may nave been the proximate cause 
of his sickness, Alexander died, a black and swollen 
mass, hideous to contemplate, after a sharp struggle 
with the venom he had absorbed.^ * All Rome,' 
says Guicciardini, ' ran with indescribable gladness to 
view the corpse. Men could not satiate their eyes 
with feeding on the carcass of a serpent who, by his 
unbounded ambition and pestiferous perfidy, by every 
demonstration of horrible cruelty, monstrous lust, and 
unheard-of avarice, selling without distinction things 
sacred and profane, had filled the world with venom.' 
Cesare languished for some days on a sick bed ; but 
in the end, by the aid of a powerful constitution, he 
recovered, to find his claws cut and his plans in 
irretrievable confusion. * The state of the Duke of 
Valence,' says Filippo Nerli,^ vanished even as smoke 
in air, or foam upon the water.' 

The moral sense of the Italians expressed itself 
after Alexander's death in the legend of a devil, who 
had carried off his soul. Burchard, Giustiniani, 
Sanudo, and others mention this incident with ap- 

» • Morto chel fu, il corpo comincib a bollire, e la bocca a spumare 
come faria uno caldaro al focho, assi persevere mentre che fu sopra 
terra; divenne anchor ultra modo grosso in tanto che in lui non ap- 
parea forma di corpo humano, ne dala larghezza ala lunghezza del 
corpo suo era differenzia alcuna ' (letter of Marquis of MantuaV 



4^2 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

parent belief. But a letter from the Marquis of 
Mantua to his wife, dated September 22, i5o3, gives 
the fullest particulars : 'In his sickness the Pope 
talked in such a way that those who did not know 
what was in his mind thought him wandering, though 
he spoke with great feeling, and his words were : / 
will come; it is but right; wait yet a little while. 
Those who were privy to his secret thought, explained 
that, after the death of Innocent, while the Conclave 
w-;:^ sitting, he bargained with the devil for the 
Papacy at the price of his soul; and among the 
agreements was this, that he should hold the See 
twelve years, which he did, with the addition of four 
days ; and some attest they saw seven devils in the 
room at the moment that he breathed his last.' 
Mere old wives' tales ; yet they mark the point to 
which the credit of the Borgia had fallen, even in 
Italy, since the hour when the humanists had praised 
his godlike carriage and heroic mien upon the day 
of his election. 

^Thus, overreaching themselves, ended this pair 
of villains — the most notable adventurers who ever 
played their part upon the stage of the great world. 
The fruit of so many crimes and such persistent 
effort was reaped by their enemy, Giuliano della 
Rovere, for whose benefit the nobles of the Roman 
state and the despots of Romagna had been extir- 
pated.^ Alexander had proved the old order of 

' Cesare, it must be remembered, had ostensibly reduced the 
cities of Lombardy, Romatrna. nnd the March, as Gonfalonier of the 
Church. 



JULIUS II, 433 

Catholicity to be untenable. The Reformation was 
imperiously demanded. His very vices spurred the 
spirit of humanity to freedom. Before a saintly 
Pontiff the new age might still have trembled in 
superstitious reverence. The Borgia to all logical 
intellects rendered the pretensions of a Pope to sway 
the souls of men ridiculous. This is an excuse for 
dwelling so long upon the spectacle of his enormities. 
Better than any other series of facts, they illustrate, 
not only the corruption of society, and the separation 
between morality and religion in Italy, but also the 
absurdity of that Church policy which in the age of 
the Renaissance confined the action of the head of 
Christendom to the narrow interests of a brood of 
parvenus and bastards. 

s Of Pius III., who reigned for a few days after 
Alexander, no account need be taken. Gluliano della 
Rovere was made Pope in 1603. Whatever opinion 
may be formed of him considered as the high-priest 
of the ' Christian faith, there can be no doubt that 
Julius II. was one of the greatest figures of the Re- 
naissance, and that his name, instead of that of Leo X., 
should by right be given to the golden age of letters 
and of arts in Rome. He stamped the century with 
the impress of a powerful personality. It is to him 
we owe the most splendid of Michael Angelo's and 
Raphael's masterpieces. The Basilica of S. Peter's, 
that materialized idea, which remains to symbolize the 
transition from the Church of the Middle Aofes to the 
modern semi-secular supremacy of Papal Rome, was 



434 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

his thought. No nepotism, no loathsome sensuality, 
no flagrant violation of ecclesiastical justice, stain his 
pontificate. His one purpose was to secure and ex- 
tend the temporal authority of the Popes; and this he 
ichieved by curbing the ambition of the Venetians, 
who threatened to absorb Romagna, by reducing Pe- 
rugia and Bologna to the Papal sway, by annexing 
Parma and Piacenza, and by entering on the heritage 
bequeathed to him by Cesare Borgia. At his death 
he transmitted to his successors the largest and most 
solid sovereignty in Italy. But restless, turbid, never 
happy unless fighting, Julius drowned the peninsula 
in blood. He has been called a patriot, because from 
time to time he raised the cry of driving the barbari- 
ans from Italy: it must, however, be remembered 
that it was he, while still Cardinal di San Pietro in 
Vincoli, who finally moved Charles VIII. from Lyons; 
it was he who stirred up the League of Cambray 
against Venice, and who invited the Swiss mercena- 
ries into Lombardy; in each case adding the weight 
of the Papal authority to the forces which were en- 
slaving his country. Julius, again, has been variously 
represented as the saviour of the Papacy, and as the 
curse of Italy.^ He was emphatically both. In those 
days of national anarchy it was perhaps impossible for 
Julius to magnify the Church except at the expense 
of the nation, and to achieve the purpose of his life 



» • Fatale instnimento e allora e prima e poi de' mali d'ltalia,' says 

Guicciardini, Storia (Tltalia, vol. i. p. 84. ' Der Retter des Papst- 

thunv;,' says Rurckhardt, p. 95. 



LEO X. 435 

without inflicting the scourge of foreign war upon his 
countrymen. The powers of Europe had outgrown 
the Papal discipline. Italian questions were being 
decided in the cabinets of Louis, Maximilian, and 
Ferdinand. Instead of controlling the arbiters of 
Italy, a Pope could only play off one against another. 
Leo X. succeeded Julius in i5i3, to the great re- 
lief of the Romans, wearied with the continual war- 
fare of the old Pontifice terribile. In the gorgeous 
pageant of his triumphal procession to the Lateran, 
the streets were decked with arches, emblems, and 
inscriptions. Among these may be noticed the coup- 
let emblazoned by the banker Agostino Chigi before 
his palace : 

Olim habuit Cypris sua tempora; tempora Mavors 
Olim habuit; sua nunc tempora Pallas habet, 

* Venus ruled here with Alexander; Mars with Julius; 
now Pallas enters on her reign with Leo.' To this 
epigram the goldsmith Antonio di San Marco an- 
swered with one pithy line : 

Mars fuit; est Pallas; Cypria semper ero: 

' Mars reigned; Pallas reigns; Venus' own I shall al- 
ways be.' 

"This first Pope of the house of Medici enjoyed at 
Rome the fame of his father Lorenzo the Magnificent 
at Florence. Extolled as an Augustus in his lifetime, 
he has given his name to what is called the golden 
age of Italian culture. As a man, he was well qual- 
ified to represent the neo-pagan freedom of the Re- 



436 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

naissance. Saturated with the spirit of his period, he 
had no sympathy with religious earnestness, no con- 
ception of moral elevation, no aim beyond a super- 
ficial polish of the understanding and the taste. Good 
Latinity seemed to him of more importance than true 
doctrine: Jupiter sounded better in a sermon than Je- 
hovah; the immortality of the soul was an open topic 
for debate. At the same time he was extravagantly 
munificent to men of culture, and hearty in his zeal 
for the diffusion of liberal knowledge. But what was 
reasonable in the man was ridiculous in the pontiff. 
There remained an irreconcilable incongruity between 
his profession of the Primacy of Christianity and his 
easy epicurean philosophy. 

. Leo, like all the Medici after the first Cosimo, 
was a bad financier. His reckless expenditure con- 
tributed in no small measure to the corruption of 
Rome and to the ruin of the Latin Church, while 
it won the praises of the literary world. Julius, who 
had exercised rigid economy, left 700,000 ducats in 
the coffers of S. Angelo. The very jewels of Leo's 
tiara were pledged to pay his debts, when he died 
suddenly in i52i. During the heyday of his splen- 
dor he spent 8,000 ducats monthly on presents to 
his favorites and on his play-debts. His table, which 
was open to all the poets, singers, scholars, and buf- 
foons of Rome, cost half the revenues of Romagna 
and the March. He founded the knighdy Order of 
S. Peter to replenish his treasury, and turned the 
conspiracy of the Cardinal Petrucci against his life 



THE ROME OF LEO, 437 

to such good account — extorting from the Cardinal 
Riarlo a fine of 5, 000 ducats, and from the Cardinals 
Soderini and Hadrian the sum of 12 5, 000 — that Von 
Hutten was almost justified in treating the whole of 
that dark business as a mere financial speculation. 
The creation of thirty-nine Cardinals in 1 5 1 7 brought 
him in above 5oo,ooo ducats. Yet, in spite of these 
expedients for getting gold, the bankers of Rome 
were half ruined when he died. The Bini had lent 
him 200,000 ducats; the Gaddi, 32,000; the Ricasoli, 
10,000; the Cardinal Salviati claimed a debt of 80,000; 
the Cardinals Santi Quattro and Armellini, each 
1 5o,ooo.^ These figures are only interesting when 
we remember that the mountains of gold which they 
denote were squandered in aesthetic sensuality. 

When the Pope was made, he said to Giuliano 
(Duke of Nemours); * Let us enjoy the Papacy since 
God has given it us — -godiamoci il Papato, poicJit Dio 
ce r ha dato? * It was in this spirit that Leo admin- 
istered the Holy See. The keynote which he struck 
dominated the whole society of Rome. At Agostinc 
Chigi's banquets, prelates of the Church and Apos- 
tolic secretaries sat side by side with beautiful Im- 
perias and smooth-cheeked singing-boys; fishes from 
Byzantium and ragouts of parrots' tongues were served 
on golden platters, which the guests threw from the 
open windows Into the Tiber. Masques and balls, 



» Sec Gregorovius, Siadi Rom, book xiv. ch. 3. 
• ' Relazione di Marino Giorgi,' March 17, 15 17. Alberi, serie* H 
▼ol. iii. p. 51. 



438 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

comedies and carnival processions filled the streets 
and squares and palaces of the Eternal City with a 
mimicry of pagan festivals, while art went hand in 
hand with luxury. It seemed as though Bacchus and 
Pallas and Priapus would be reinstated in their old 
realm, and yet Rome had not ceased to call herself 
Christian. The hoarse rhetoric of friars in the Col- 
iseum, and the drone of pifferari from the Ara Coeli, 
mingled with the Latin declamations of the Capitol 
and the twang of lute-strings in the Vatican. Mean- 
while, amid crowds of Cardinals in hunting-dress, 
dances of half-naked girls, and masques of Carnival 
Bacchantes, moved pilgrims from the North with 
wide, astonished, woful eyes— disciples of Luther, 
in whose soul, as in a scabbard, lay sheathed the 
sword of the Spirit, ready to flash forth and smite. 

A more complete conception may be formed of 
Leo by comparing him with Julius. Julius disturbed 
the peace of Italy with a view to establishing the 
temporal power of his see. Leo returned to the 
old nepotism of the previous Popes, and fomented 
discord for the sake of the Medici. It was at one 
time his project to secure the kingdom of Naples for" 
his brother Giuliano, and a Milanese sovereignty for 
his nephew Lorenzo. On the latter he succeeded in 
conferring the Duchy of Urbino, to the prejudice of 
its rightful owners.^ With Florence in their hands 



» He would have g^ven It to Giuliano, but Giuliano was an nonest 

man and remembered what he owed to the della Rovere fa nity. Sor 
the 'Relazione' of Marino Giorori [ReJ. Ven. ser. ii. vol. iii. p. 51). 



JULIUS AND LEO. 439 

and the Papacy under their control, the Medici might 
have swayed all Italy. Such plans, however, in the 
days of Francis I. and Charles V. had become im- 
practicable; nor had any of the Medicean family stuff 
to undertake more than the subjugation of their na- 
tive city. Julius was violent in temper, but obser- 
vant of his promises. Leo was suave and slippery. 
He lured Gianpaolo Baglioni to Rome by a safe- 
conduct, and then had him imprisoned and beheaded 
in the Castle of S. Angelo. Julius delighted in war 
and was never happier than when the cannons roared 
around him at Mirandola. Leo vexed the soul of 
his master of the ceremonies because he would 
ride out a-hunting in topboots. Julius designed S. 
Peter's and comprehended Michael Angelo. Leo 
had the wit to patronize the poets, artists and histo- 
rians who added luster to his Court; but he brought 
no new great man of genius to the front. The por- 
traits of the two Popes, both from the hand of 
Raphael, are exceedingly characteristic. Julius, bent 
and emaciated, has the nervous glance of a passion- 
ate and energetic temperament; though the brand is 
hoar with ashes and more than half burned out, it 
glows and can inflame a conflagration. Leo, heavy- 
jawed, dull-eyed, with thick lips and a brawny jowl 
betrays the coarser fiber of a sensualist. 

It has often been remarked that both Julius and 
Leo raised money by the sale of indulgences with a 
view to the building of S. Peter's, thus aggravating 
one of the chief scandals which orovoked the fN^ofor 



440 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

mation. In that age of maladjusted impulses the de- 
sire to execute a great work of art, combined with 
the cynical resolve to turn the superstitions of the 
people to account, forced rebellion to a head. Leo 
was unconscious of the magnitude of Luther's move- 
ment. If he thought at all seriously of the phenom- 
enon, it stirred his wonder. Nor did he feel the ne- 
cessity of reformation in the Church of Italy. The 
rich and many-sided life of Rome and the diplo- 
matic interests of Italian despotism absorbed his 
whole attention. It was but a small matter what 
barbarians thought or did. 

', The sudden death of Leo threw the Holy College 
into great perplexity. To choose the new Pope 
without reference to political interests was impossible ; 
and these were divided between Charles V. and 
Francis I. After twelve days spent by the Cardinals 
in conclave, the result of their innumerable schemes 
and counter-schemes was the election of the Cardinal 
of Tortosa. No one knew him; and his elevation 
to the Papacy, due to the influence of Charles, was 
almost as great a surprise to the electors as to the 
Romans. In their rage and horror at having chosen 
this barbarian, the College began to talk about the 
inspiration of the Holy Ghost, seeking the most im- 
probable of all excuses for the m'stake to which 
intrigue had driven them. * The courtiers of the 
Vatican and chief officers of the Church,' says an 
eyewitness, ' wept and screamed and cursed and gave 
up to despair.' A1on<r the blank walls 



ADRIAN VI. 441 

of the city was scrawled : * Rome to let.' Sonnets 
fell in showers, accusing the cardinals of having de- 
livered over * the fair Vatican to a German's fury.* ^ 
Adrian VI. came to Rome for the first time as Pope.^ 
He knew no Italian, and talked Latin with an accent 
unfamiliar to southern ears. His studies had been 
confined to scholastic philosophy and theology. With 
courts he had no commerce ; and he was so ignorant 
of the state a Pope should keep in Rome, that he 
wrote beforehand requesting that a modest house and 
garden might be hired for his abode. When he saw 
the Vatican, he exclaimed that here the successors, 
not of Peter, but of Constantine should dwell. Leo 
kept one hundred grooms for the service of his 
stable; Adrian retained but four. Two Flemish 
valets sufficed for his personal attendance, and to 
these he gave each evening one ducat for the ex- 
penses of the next day's living. A Flemish serving 
woman cooked his food, made his bed and washed 
his linen. Rome, with its splendid immorality, its 
classic art and pagan culture, made the same im- 
pression on him that it made on Luther. When his 
courtiers pointed to the Laocoon as the most illus- 
trious monument of ancient sculpture, he turned away 
with horror, murmuring : ' Idols of the Pagans ! * The 

> See Greg. Stadt Rom, vol. viii. pp. 382, 383. The details about 
Adriano are chiefly taken from the Relazionioi the Venetian embas- 
sadors, series ii. vol. iii. pp. 75-120. 

8 His father's name was Florus or Flerentius, c f the Flemish 
family, it is supposed, of Dedel. Berni calls him a carpet-maker. 
Other accounts represent him as a ship's carpenter. The Pope's 
baptismal name was Adrian. 



442 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

Belvedere, which was fast becoming the first statue- 
gallery in Europe, he walled up and never entered. 
At the same time he set himself with earnest pur- 
pose, so far as his tied hands and limited ability would 
go, to reform the more patent abuses of the Churcli. 
Leo had raised about three million ducats by the sale 
of offices, which represented an income of 348,000 
ducats to the purchasers, and provided places for 
2,55o persons. By a stroke of his pen Adrian can- 
celed these contracts and threw upon the world a 
crowd of angry and defrauded officials. It was but 
poor justice to remind them that their bargain with 
his predecessor had been illegal. Such attempts, how- 
ever, at a reformation of ecclesiastical society were as 
ineffectual as pin-pricks in the cure of a fever which 
demands blood-letting. The real corruption of Rome, 
deeply seated in high places, remained untouched. 
Luther meanwhile had carried all before him in the 
North, and accurate observers in Rome itself dreaded 
some awful catastrophe for the guilty city. *\^This 
state is set upon the razor-edge of peril; God grant 
we have not soon to take flight to Avignon or to the 
ends of the ocean. I see the downfall of this spiritual 
monarchy at hand. Unless God help, it is all over 
with us.'^ Adrian met the emergency, and took up 
arms against the sea of troubles by expressing his 
horror of simony, sensuality, thievery and so forth. 
The result was that he was simply laughed at 

> See the passage quoted from the Letter e de' Principi, Rome, 
March 17, 1523, by Burckhardt, p. 99, note. 



THE SACK OF ROME. 443 

Pasquin made so merry with his name that Adrlar 

vowed he would throw the statue into the Tiber; 

whereupon the Duke of Sessa wittily replied : * Throw 

him to the bottom, and, like a frog, he'll go on 

Cloaking.' Berni, again, wrote one of his cleverest 

Capitoli upon the dunce who could not comprehend 

his age; and when he died, his doctor's door was 

ornamented with this inscription : Liberatori patrics 

Senatus Populusque Romanus, 

Great was the rejoicing when another Medici was 

made Pope in 1523. People hoped that the merry 

days of Leo would return. But things had gone too 

far toward dissolution. Clement VII. failed to give 

satisfaction to the courtiers whom his more genial 

cousin had delighted : even the scholars and the poets 

grumbled.^ His rule was weak and vacillating, so 

that the Colonna faction raised its head again and 

drove him to the Castle of S. Angelo. The political 

horizon of Italy grew darker and more sullen daily, 

as before some dreadful storm. Over Rome itself 

impended ruin — 

as when God 
Will o'er some high-viced city hang his poison 
In the sick air.' 

At last the crash came. Clement by a series of 
treaties, treacheries, and tergiversations had deprived 
himself of every friend and exasperated every foe. 
Italy was so worn out with warfare, so accustomed 

> See, for instance, Berni's sonnets. In one of these, Berni very 
powerfully describes the vacillation and irresolution of Clement's 
state-policy. 

• See Varchi's picture of the state of Rome St Fior, IL 16. 



444 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

to the anarchy of aimless revolutions and to the 
trampling to and fro of stranger squadrons on her 
shores, that the news of a Lutheran troop, levied 
with the express object of pillaging Rome, and rein- 
forced with Spanish ruffians and the scum of every 
nation, scarcely roused her apathy. The so-called 
army of Frundsberg — a horde of robbers held to- 
gether by the hope of plunder — marched without 
difficulty to the gates of Rome. So low had the 
honor of Italian princes fallen that the Duke of 
Ferrara, by direct aid given, and the Duke of Ur- 
bino, by counter-force withheld, opened the passes 
of the Po and of the Apennines to these marauders. 
They lost their general in Lombardy. The Con- 
stable Bourbon, who succeeded him, died in the as- 
sault of the city. Then Rome for nine months was 
abandoned to the lust, rapacity, and cruelty of some 
30,000 brigands without a leader. It was then dis- 
covered to what lengths of insult, violence, and bes- 
tiality the brutal barbarism of Germans and the 
avarice of Spaniards could be carried. Clement, 
beleaguered in the Castle of S. Angelo, saw day 
and night the smoke ascend from desolated palaces 
and desecrated temples, heard the wailing of women 
and the groans of tortured men mingle with the jests 
of Lutheran drunkards and the curses of Castilian 
bandits. Roaming its galleries and leaning from its 
windows he exclaimed with Job : ^ * Quare de vulvd 
tduxisti me? qui utinam consumptus esseniy nc oculus 

> So Lui^ Guicciardini in his account of the sack of Rome relates 



THE TREATY OF AMIENS. 445 

me videret' What the Romans, emasculated by lux- 
ury and priest rule, what the Cardinals and prelates, 
lapped in sensuality and sloth, were made to suffer 
during this long agony, can scarcely be described. 
It is too horrible. When at last the barbarians, 
sated with blood, surfeited with lechery, glutted 
with gold, and decimated by pestilence, withdrew, 
Rome raised her head a widow. From the shame 
and torment of that sack she never recovered, never 
became again the gay licentious lovely capital of arts 
and letters, the glittering gilded Rome of Leo. But 
the kings of the earth took pity on her desolation. 
The treaty of Amiens (August t8, i527), concluded 
between Francis I. and Henry VIII. against Charles 
v., in whose name this insult had been offered to 
the Holy City of Christendom, together with Charles's 
own tardy willingness to make amends, restored the 
Papacy to the respect of Europe. 

It is well known that at this crisis the Emperor 
seriously thought of putting an end to the State of 
the Church. His councilors advised him to restore 
the Pope to his original rank of Bishop, and to make 
Rome again the seat of Empire.^ But to have done 
this would have been impossible under the political 
conditions of the sixteenth century, and in the face 
of Christendom still Catholic. His deliberations, 
therefore, cost Rome the miseries of the sack; but 
they were speedily superseded by the determination 
to strengthen the Papal by means of the Imperial 

» See the authorities in Greo-. Stadt Rom, vol. viii. pp. 569, 575. 



446 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

authority in Italy; Florence was given as a make- 
peace offering to the contemptible Medici; and it 
remains the worst shame of Clement that he used 
the dregs of the army that had sacked Rome for 
the enslavement of his mother- city. 

Internally, the Papal State had learned by its mis* 
fortunes the necessity of a reform. Sadoleto, writ- 
ing in the September of that memorable year to 
Clement, reminds him that the sufferings of Rome 
have satisfied the wrath of God, and that the way 
was now open for an amelioration of manners and 
laws.i No force of arms could prevent the Holy 
City from returning to a better life, and proving that 
the Christian priesthood was not a mere mockery and 
^ sham.2 In truth the Counter- Reformation may be said 
to date historically from"ii52;7;^ 

» It was universally recognized in Italy that the sack of Rome was 
a punishment inflicted by Providence upon the godless city. Without 
quoting great authorities like Sadoleto or the Bishop of Fossombrone, 
one of whose letters gives a really awful picture of Roman profligacy 
{Opere di M. G. Guidiccioni, Barbera, vol. i. p. 193), we find abun- 
dant testimony to this persuasion regarding the intolerable vice of 
Rome, even in men devoid of moral conscience. Aretino {La Cor- 
tegiana, end of Act i. Sc. xxiii.) writes: ' lo mic redeva che il castigo, 
che r ha dato Cristo per mano degli Spagnuoli, I'avesse fatta migH- 
ore, et ^ piu scellerata che mai.' Bandello {Novelle, Parte ii. xxxvii.) 
alluding to the sack, remarks in a parenthesis, ' benche i peccati dl 
quella citti meritassero esser castigati.' After adducing two such 
witnesses, it would weaken the case to cite Trissino or Vettori, both 
of whom expressed themselves with force upon the iniquities of Papal 
Rome. 

« Comip3.re LeUere de' Princ. ii. 77; Cardinal Cajetanus, and other 
testimonies quoted by Greg. Stadt Rotn, vol. viii. pp. 568, 578 



CHAPTER VIIL 

THE CHURCH AND MORALITY 

Corruption of the Church — Degradation and Division of \taly — Opin • 
ions of Machiavelli, Guicciardini, and King Ferdinand of Naples- 
Incapacity of the Italians for thorough Reformation — The World- 
liness and Culture of the Renaissance — Witness of Italian Authors 
against the Papal Court and the Convents — Superstitious Respect 
for Relics — Separation between Religion and Morality — Mixture 
of Contempt and Reverence for the Popes — Gianpaolo Baglioni — 
Religious Sentiments of the Tyrannicides — Pietro Paolo Boscoli — 
Tenacity of Religions — The direct Interest of the Italians in Rome 
— Reverence for the Sacraments of the Church — Opinions pro- 
nounced by Englishmen on Italig,n Immorality — 5ad Faith and 
Sensuality — The Element of the Fancy in Italian Vice — The Ital- 
ians not Cruel, or Brutal, or Intemperate by Nature — Domestic 
Murders — Sense of Honor in Italy — Onore and Onesti — General 
Refinement — Good Qualities of the People — Religious Revivalism. 

The corruption of the Papal Court involved a corre- 
sponding moral weakness throughout Italy. This 
makes the history of the Popes of the Renaissance- 
Important precisely in those details which formed the 
subject of the preceding chapter. Morality and reli- 
gion suffered an almost complete separation In the fif- 
teenth century. The chiefs of the Church with cynical 
effrontery violated every tradition of Christ and the 
Apostles, so that the example of Rome was in som^ 
sense the justification of fraud, violence, lust, filthy li\ 
iiig, and ungodliness to the whole nation. 

The contradiction between the spiritual preten 
slons of the Popes and their actual worldllness was 



448 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

not SO glaring to the men of the Renaissance, accus- 
tomed by long habit to the spectacle of this anomaly, 
as it is to us. Nor would it be scientific to imagine 
that any Italian in that age judged by moral standards 
similar to ours. Esthetic propriety rather than strict 
conceptions of duty ruled the conduct even of the best, 
and it is wonderful to observe with what artless sim- 
plicity the worst sinners believed they might make 
peace in time of need with heaven. Yet there were 
not wanting profound thinkers who traced the national 
decay of the Italians to the corruption of the Church. 
Among these Machiavelli stands foremost. In a cele- 
brated passage of the Discorsi}^ after treating the whole 
subject of the connection between good government 
and religion, he breaks forth into this fiery criticism of 
the Papacy: ' Had the religion of Christianity been pre- 
served according to the ordinances of its founder, the 
states and commonwealths of Christendom would have 
been far more united and far happier than they are. 
Nor is it possible to form a better estimate of its de- 
cay than by observing that, in proportion as we ap- 
proach nearer to the Roman Church, the head of this 
religion, we find less piety prevail among the nations. 
Considering the primitive constitution of that Church, 
and noting how diverse are its present customs, we 
are forced to judge that without doubt either ruin or 
a scourge is now impending over it. And since some 
men are of opinion that the welfare of Italy depends 
upon the Church, I wish to put forth such arguments 

' Lib. 1. cap. 12. 



ITALY AND ROME, 449 

as occur to my mind to the contrary; and of these I 
will adduce two, which, as I think, are irrefutable. 
The first is this: that owing to the evil ensample of 
the Papal Court, Italy has lost all piety and all religion: 
whence follow infinite troubles and disorders; for as 
religion implies all good, so its absence implies the 
contrary. Consequently, to the Church and priests 
of Rome we Italians owe this obligation first — that 
we have become void of religion and corrupt. But 
we also owe them another, even greater, which is the 
cause of our ruin. I mean that the Church has main- 
tained and still maintains Italy divided. Of a truth 
no province ever was united and prosperous, unless 
it were reduced beneath the sway of one republic or 
one monarch, as is the case with France and Spain. 
And the reason w^hy Italy is not in this condition, but 
has neither commonwealth nor monarch for her head, 
is none other than the Church: for the Church, estab- 
lished in our midst and exercising a temporal author- 
ity, has never had the force or vigor to extend its 
sway over the whole country and to become the rul- 
ing power in Italy. Nor on the other hand has it 
been so feeble as not to be able, when afraid of los- 
ing its temporalities, to call in a foreign potentate, as 
a counterpoise in its defense against those powers 
which threatened to become supreme. Of the truth 
of this, past history furnishes many instances; as 
when, by the help of Charlemagne, the Popes ex- 
pelled the Lombards; and when in our own days 
they humbled Venice by the aid of France, and af- 



450 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

Lerwards drove out the French by calling in the Swiss. 
So then the Church, being on the one hand too weak 
to grasp the whole of Italy, and at the same time too 
jealous to allow another power to do so, has pre- 
vented our union beneath one head, and has kept us 
under scattered lords and princes. These have caused 
so much discord and debiVIty that Italy has become 
the prey not only of powerful barbarians, but also 
of every assailant. And this we owe solely and en- 
tirely to the Church. In order to learn by experience 
the truth of what I say, one ought to be able to send 
the Roman Court, armed with like authority to that it 
wields in Italy, to take up its abode among the Swiss, 
who at the present moment are the only nation living, 
as regards religion and military discipline, according 
to the antique fashion; he would then see that the 
evil habits of that Court would in no long space of time 
create more disorders than any other misfortune that 
could arise there in any period whatever.' In this 
scientific and deliberate opinion pronounced by the 
profoundest thinker of the sixteenth century, the Pa- 
pacy is accused of having caused both the moral de- 
pravation and the political disunion of Italy. The 
second of these points, which belongs to the general 
history of the Italian nation, might be illustrated 
abundantly: but one other sentence from the pen of 
Machiavelli exposes the ruinous and selfish policy of 
the Church more forcibly than could be done by copi- 
ous examples: 1 *In this way the Pontiffs at one time 

> 1st, Fior. lib. i. 



MACHIAVELWS VERDICT. 45 1 

by love of their religion, at other times for the further- 
ance of their ambitious schemes, have never ceased 
to sow the seeds of disturbance and to call foreigners 
into Italy, spreading wars, making and unmaking 
princes, and preventing stronger potentates from 
holding the province they were too feeble to rule.' 
Guicciardini, commenting upon the Discorsi of 
Machiavelli, begins his gloss upon the passage I have 
just translated, with these emphatic words : ^ 'It 
would be impossible to speak so ill of the Roman 
Court but that more abuse would not be merited, 
seeing it is an infamy, an example of all the shames 
and scandals of the world.' He then proceeds to 
argue, like Machiavelli, that the greatness of the 
Church prevented Italy from becoming a nation under 
one head, showing, however, at the same time that 
the Italians had derived much benefit from their 
division into separate states.^ To the concurrent testi- 
mony of these great philosophic writers may be 
added the evidence of a practical statesman, Ferdi- 

» Guicc. op. Ined. vol. i. p. 27. 

« In another place {Op. Ined. vol. i. p. 104) Guicciardini describes 
the rule of priests as founded on violence of two sorts; ' perch^ ci 
sforzano con le armi temporali e con le spirituali.' It may be well 
to collect the chief passages in Machiavelli and Guicciardini, besides 
those already quoted, which criticise the Papacy in relation to Italian 
politics. The most famous is at the end of the fourth book of the 
Istoria d' Italia (Edn. Rosini, vol. ii. pp. 218-30). Next may be 
placed the sketch of Papal History in Machiavelli's Istorie Florentine 
(lib. i. cap. 9-25). The eleventh chapter of the Principe gives a short 
sketch of the growth of the temporal power, so framed as to be ac- 
ceptable to the Medici, but steeped in the most acid irony. See, in 
particular, the sentence 'Costoro solo hanno stati e non li difendono, 
lianno suddiii c non Ii ^overnano,' etc 



45« RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

nand, king of Naples, who in 1493 wrote as follows:' 
* From year to year up to this time we have seen the 
Popes seeking to hurt and hurting their neighbors, 
without having to act on the defensive or receiving 
any injury. Of this we are ourselves the witness, by 
reason of things they have done and attempted 
against us through their inborn ambition ; and of the 
many misfortunes which have happened of late in 
Italy it is clear that the Popes are authors/ It is not 
so much however with the political as with the 
moral aspect of the Church that we are at present 
concerned : and on the latter point Guicciardini may 
once more be confronted with his illustrious contem- 
porary. In his aphorisms he says : 2 * No man hates 
the ambition, avarice, and effeminacy of the priests 
more than I do ; for these vices, odious in themselves, 
are most unseemly in men who make a profession 
of living in special dependence on the Deity. Be- 
sides, they are so contradictory that they cannot be 
combined except in a very extraordinary subject. My 
position under several Popes has compelled me to 
desire their aggrandizement for the sake of my own 
profit.^ Otherwise, I should have loved Martin 
Luther like myself — not that I might break loose 
from the laws which Christianity, as it is usually 
interpreted and comprehended, imposes on us, but 

» See the dispatch quoted by Gregorovius, Stadt Rom, vol. vil 
p. 7, note. 

« Op. Ined. Ricordi No. 28. Compare Ariosto, Satire i. 20&-27. 
* Guicciardini had been secretary and vicegerent of the Mediceaa 

I'opes. Sec back, p. 206. 



GUICCIARDmrS VERDICT, 453 

that I might see tnat horde of villains reduced within 
due limits, and forced to live either without vices or 
without power.' 

These utterances are all the more remarkable be- 
cause they do not proceed from the deep sense of 
holiness which animated reformers like Savonarola. 
Machiavelli was not zealous for the doctrines of 
Christianity so much as for the decencies of an 
established religion. In one passage of the Discorsi 
he even pronounces his opinion that the Christian 
faith compared with the creeds of antiquity, had en- 
feebled national spirit.^ Privately, moreover, he was 
himself stained with the moral corruption which he 
publicly condemned. Guicciardini, again, in the pas- 
sage before us, openly avows his egotism. Keen- 
sighted as they were in theory, these politicians suf- 
fered in their own lives from that gangrene which 
had penetrated the upper classes of Italy to the 
marrow. Their patriotism and their desire for right- 
eousness were not strong enough to make them 
relinquish the pleasure and the profit they derived 
from the existing state of things. Nor had they the 
energy or the opportunity to institute a thorough 
revolution. Italy, as Machiavelli pointed out in an- 
other passage of the Discorsi ^ had become too pre- 
maturely decrepit for reinvigorating changes; 2 and 
the splendid appeal with which the Principe is closed 

» Discorsi, ii. 2, Hi. i. These chapters breathe the bitterest con- 
tempt for Christianity, the most undisguised hatred for its historical 
development, the intensest rancor against Catholic ecclesiastics. 

« Discorsi, i. 55. 



454 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

must even to its author have sounded like a flourish 
of rhetorical trumpets. 

Moreover, it seemed impossible for an Italian to 
rise above the conception of a merely formal reforma- 
tion, or to reach that higher principle of life which 
consists in the enunciation of a new religious truth. 
The whole argument in the Discorsi which precedes 
the chapter I have quoted, treats religion not in 
its essence as pure Christianity, but as a state engine 
for the maintenance of public order and national 
well-being.^ That Milton and Cromwell may have 
so regarded religion is true : but they had, besides, 
a personal sense of the necessity of righteousness, 
the fear of God, at the root of their political con- 
victions. While Machiavelli and Guicciardini wished 
to deprive the Popes of temporal sovereignty, in 
order that the worst scandals of their Court might 
be suppressed, and that the peace of Italy might be 
secured, Savonarola desired to purge the Church of 
sin, but to retain its hierarchy and its dogmas in- 
violate. Neither the politicians nor the prophet had 
discerned, w^hat Luther and the nations of the North 
saw clearly, that a fresh element of spiritual vitality 
was necessary for the regeneration of society ; or in 
other words, that good government presupposes liv- 
ing religion, and not that religion should be used as 

» Mach. Disc. i. 12, after exposing the shams on which, as he be- 
lieved, the religious institutions of Numa rested, asserts that, how- 
ever much governors may be persuaded of the falseness of religions, 
it is their duty to maintain them: ' e debbono . . . come che le giu- 
dicassero false, favorirle e accrescerle.' 



RELIGIOUS APATHY. 455 

an engine for the consolidation of empire over the 
people.^ 

The inherent feebleness of Italy in this respect 
proceeded from an intellectual apathy toward relig- 
ious questions, produced partly by the stigma attach- 
ing to unorthodoxy, partly by the absorbing interests 
of secular culture, partly by the worldliness of the 
Renaissance, partly by the infamy of the ecclesiastics, 
and partly by the enervating influence of tyrannies. 
However bold a man might be, he dreaded the name 
of heretic; the term pateritio, originally applied to re- 
ligious innovators, had become synonymous in com- 
mon phraseology with rogue. It was a point of 
good society and refined taste to support the Church. 
Again, the mental faculties of Italy had for three 
centuries been taxed to the utmost in studies wide 
apart from the field of religious faith. Art, scholar- 
ship, philosophy, and meditation upon politics had 
given a definite direction to the minds of thinking 
men,' so that little energy was left for those instinctive 
movements of the spirit which produced the Ger- 
man Reformation. The great work of Italy had 
been the genesis of the Renaissance, the develop- 
ment of modern culture. And the tendencies o 
the Renaissance were worldly: its ideal of human 
life left no room for a pure and ardent intuition into 

• Yet read the curious passage {Disc. iii. i) in which Machiavelli 
discusses the regeneration of religion by a return to its vital princi- 
ple, and shows how S. Francis and S. Dominic had done this in the 
thirtRpnth c/»nturv. Tt wai oreciselv what Luther was designing 

\vnile Macniaveiu was wncing,. 



♦5^ RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

Spiritual truth. Scholars occupied with the interpre- 
tation of classic authors, artists bent upon investing 
current notions with the form of beauty, could hardly 
be expected to exclaim : * The fear of the Lord, that 
is wisdom ; and to depart from evil, that is under- 
standing.' ^ Materialism ruled the speculations no 
less than the conduct of the age. Pamponazzo 
preached an atheistic doctrine, with the plausible 
reservation of Salva Fide, which then covered all. 
The more delicate thinkers, Pico and Ficino, sought 
to reconcile irreconcilables by fusing philosophy and 
theology, while they distinguished truths of science 
from truths of revelation. It seems meanwhile to 
have occurred to no one in Italy that the liberation 
of the reason necessitated an abrupt departure from 
Catholicism. They did not perceive that a power an- 
tagonistic to mediaeval orthodoxy had been generated. 
This was in great measure due to indifference; for the 
Church herself had taught her children by example to 
regard her dogmas and her discipline as a convenient 

> It is well known that Savonarola's objection to classical culture 

was based upon his perception of its worldliness. It is very remark- 
able to note the feeling on this point of some of the greatest northern 
scholars. Erasmus, for example, writes: ' unus adhuc scrupulus 
habet animum meum, ne sub obtentu priscse Hteraturas renascentis 
caput erigere conetur Paganismus, ut sunt inter Christianos qui titulo 
paene duntaxat Christum agnoscunt, ceterum intus Gentili^atem 
spirant' — Letter 207 (quoted by Milman in his Quarterly article on 
Erasmus). Ascham and Melanchthon passed similar judgments 
upon the Italian scholars. The nations of the north had the Italians 
at a disadvantage, for they entered into their labors, and all the dan- 
gerous work of sympathy with the ancient world, upon which modern 
scholarship was based, had been done in Italy before Germa«ny and 
England came into the field. 



ITALIAN MORAL FEELING, 457 

convention. It required all the scourges of the In- 
quisition to flog the nation back, not to lively faith, 
but to hypocrisy. Furthermore, the political condi- 
tions of Italy were highly unfavorable to a profound 
, religious revolution. The thirst for national liberty 
which inspired England in the sixteenth century, 
impelling the despotic Tudors to cast off the yoke 
of Rome, arming Howard the Catholic against the 
holy fleet of Philip, and joining prince and people 
in one aspiration after freedom, was impossible in 
Italy. The tone of Machiavelli s Principe, the whole 
tenor of Castiglione's Cortigiano, prove this without 
the need of further demonstration. 

Few things are more diflicult than to estimate 
the exact condition of a people at any given period 
with regard to morality and religion. And this dif- 
ficulty is increased tenfold when the age presents 
such rapid transitions and such bewildering com- 
plexities as mark the Renaissance. Yet we can- 
not omit to notice the attitude of the Italians at 
large in relation to the Church, and to determine 
in some degree the character of their national mo- 
rality. Against the corruption of Rome one cry 
of hatred and contempt arises from a crowd of 
witnesses. Dante's fiery denunciations, Jacopone's 
threats, the fierce invectives of Petrarch, and the 
thundering prophecies of Joachim lead the chorus. 
Boccaccio follows with his scathing irony. * Send 
ihe most obstinate Jew to Rome,' he says, * and the 
proMieacv of the Pann1 Conrt will not fail to convert 



458 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

him to the faith that can resist such obloquy/ * An 
other glaring scandal was the condition of the con 
vents. All novelists combine in painting the de 
pravity of the religious houses as a patent fact in 
social life. Boccaccio, Sacchetti, Bandello, and Ma 
succio may be mentioned in particular for their 
familiar delineation of a profligacy which was in- 
terwoven with the national existence.^ The comic 
poets take the same course, and delight in ridiculing 
the gross manners of the clergy. Nor do the eccles- 

> We may compare this Umbrian Rispetto for the opposite view. 

A Roma Santa ce so gito anch' io, 
E ho visto co' miei occhi il fatto mio: 
E quando a Roma ce s' e posto il piede, 
Resta la rabbia e se ne va la fede. 

• It may not be out of place to collect some passages from Masue* 
Cio's Novelle on the Clergy, premising that what he writes with the 
fierceness of indignation is repeated with the cynicism of indulgence 
by contemporary novelists. Speaking of the ' Popes, he says (ed. 
Napoli, Morano, 1874): ' me tacerb non solo de lore scelesti ed enoi- 
missimi vizi e pubblici e occulti adoperati, e de li officii, de beneficji, 
prelature, i vermigli cappelli, che all' incanto per loro morte vendono, 
ma del camauro del principe San Pietro che ne 6 gia stato tatto pa«.- 
tuito baratto non faro alcuna mentione.' Descending to prelates, he 
uses similar language (p. 64): 'non possa mai pervenire ad alcun 
grado di prelatura se non col favore del maestro della zecca, e quehe 
conviensela comprare all* incanto come si fa dei cavalli in fiera.' A 
priest is (p. 31) ' il venerabile lupo.' The members of religious ordeis 
are (p. 534) ' ministri de satanasso . . . soldati del gran diavolo." 
(p. 25) ' piu facilmente tra cento soldati se ne trovarebbero la meia 
buoni, che tra tutto un capitolo de frati ne fosse uno senza brutli:*- 
sima macchia.* It is perilous to hold any communication with them 
(p. 39): 'Con loro non altri che usurai, fornicatori, e omini di mala 
sorte conversare si vedeno.' Their sins against nature (p. 63), the 
secret marriages of monks and nuns (p. 83), the ' fetide cloache tii 
monache,' choked with the fruits of infanticide (p. 84.), not to mention 
their avarice (p. 55) and gross impiety (p. 52), are described wiHv • 
naked sincerity that bears upon its face the stamp of truth. 



MORALS OF THE . ERGY. 459 

lastics spare themselves. Poggio, the author of the 
Facetics, held benefices and places at the Papal Court. 
Bandello was a Dominican and nephew of the Gen- 
eral of his order. Folengo was a Benedictine. Bib- 
biena became a cardinal. Bern! received a Canonry 
in the Cathedral of Florence. Such was the open 
and acknowledged immorality oi the priests in Rome 
that more than one Papal edict was issued forbidding 
them to keep houses of bad repute or to act as 
panders.! Among the aphorisms of Pius II. is re- 
corded the saying that if there were good reasons 
for enjoining celibacy on the clergy, there were far 
better and stronger arguments for insisting on their 
marriage.2 

I Some of the contempt and hatred expressed by 



' A famous passage from Agrippa (De Vanitate Scientiarum) de- 
serves a place here. After alluding to Sixtus IV. he says that many 
state officers ' in civitatibus suis lupanaria construunt foventque, non- 
nihil ex meretricio questu etiam asrario suo accumulantes emolu- 
menti; quod quidem in Italia non rarum est, ubi etiam Romana 
scorta in singulas hebdomadas Julium pendent Pontifici, qui census 
annuus nonnunquam viginti millia ducatos excedit, adeoque Ecclesise 
procerum id munus est, ut una cum Ecclesiarum proventibus etiam 
lenociniorum numerent mercedem. Sic enim ego illos supputantes 
aliquando audivi: Habet, inquientes, ille duo beneficia, unum cura- 
tum aureorum viginti, alterum prioratum ducatorum quadraginta, et 
tres putanas in burdello, quae reddunt singulis hebdomadibus Julios 
Viginti.' 

2 Very few ecclesiastics of high rank escaped the contagion of 
Roman society. It was fashionable for men like Bembo and La Casa 
to form connections with women of the demi-monde and to recognize 
their children, whose legitimation they frequently procured. The 
Capitoli of the burlesque poets show that this laxity of conduct was 
pardonable, when compared with other laughingly avowed and all 
but universal indulgences. Once more, compare Gu"diccioni's let- 
ter to M. Giamb. Bernard! Opp. vol. i. p. 191 



46o RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

the Italian satirists for the two great orders of S. Fran- 
cis and S. Dominic may perhaps be due to an an- 
cient grudge against them as a Papal police founded 
in the interests of orthodoxy. But the chief point 
aimed at is the mixture of hypocrisy with immorality, 
which rendered them odious to all classes of society. 
At the same time the Franciscans embraced among 
their lay brethren nearly all the population of Italy, 
and to die in the habit of the order was thought the 
safest way of cheating the devil of his due. Corrup- 
tion had gone so far and deep that it was universally 
recognized and treated with the sarcasm of levity. It 
roused no sincere reaction, and stimulated no persistent 
indignation. Every one acknowledged it; yet every 
one continued to live indolently according to the fash- 
ion of his forefathers, acting up to Ovid's maxim — 

Pro magna parte vetustas 
Creditur; acceptam parce movere fidem. 

It is only this incurable indifference that renders 
Machiavelli s comic portraits of Fra Alberigo and Fra 
Timoteo at all intelligible. They are neither satires 
nor caricatures, but simple pictures drawn for the 
amusement of contemporaries and the stupefaction of 
posterity. 

The criticism of the Italian writers, so far as we 
have yet followed it, was directed against two sepa- 
rate evils — the vicious worldliness of Rome, and the 
demoralization of the clergy both in their dealings 
with the people and in their conventual life. Con- 
tempt for false miracles and spurious reliques, and the 



RELIQUES. 461 

horror of the traffic in indulgences, swelled the storm 
of discontent among the more enlightened. But the 
people continued to make saints, to adore wonder- 
working shrines, and to profit by the spiritual advan- 
tages which could be bought. Pius II., mindful of 
the honor of his native city, canonized S. Bernardino 
and S. Catherine of Siena. Innocent VIII. conse- 
crated a chapel for the Lance of Longinus, which he 
had received from the Turk as part-payment for the 
guardianship of Djem. The Venetian Senate offered 
10,000 ducats for the seamless coat of Christ (145 5). 
The whole of Italy was agitated by the news that 
S. Andrew s head had arrived from Patras ( 1 462). The 
Pope and his Cardinals went forth to meet it near the 
Milvian bridge. There Pius II. pronounced a Latin 
speech of welcome, while Bessarion delivered an 
oration when the precious member was deposited in 
S. Peter s. In this passion for reliques two different 
sentiments seem to have been combined — the merely 
superstitious belief in the efficacy of charms, which 
caused the Venetians to guard the body of S. Mark 
so jealously, and the Neapolitans to watch the lique- 
faction of the blood of S. Januarius with a frenzy of 
excitement — and that nobler respect for the persons 
of the mighty dead which induced SIgismondo Mala- 
testa to transport the body of Gemistus Pletho to 
Rimini, and which rendered the supposed coffin of 
Aristotle at Palermo an object of admiration to Mus- 
sulman and Christian alike. The bones of Virgil, it 
will be remembered, had been built into the walls of 



462 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

Naples, while those of Livy were honored with splen- 
did sepulture at Padua 

Owing to the separation between religion and 
morality which existed in Italy under the influence 
of Papal and monastic profligacy, the Italians saw 
no reason why spiritual benefits should not be pur- 
chased from a notoriously rapacious Pontiff, or why 
the penalty of hell should not depend upon the mere 
word of a consecrated monster. The Pope as suc- 
cessor of S. Peter, and the Pope as Roman sover- 
eign, were two separate beings. Many curious in- 
dications of the mixed feeling of the people upon 
this point, and of the advantage which the Pope 
derived from his anomalous position, may be gath- 
ered from the historians of the period. Machiavelli, 
in his narrative of the massacre at Sinigaglia, relates 
that Vitellozzo Vitelli, while being strangled by 
Cesare Borgia's assassin, begged hard that the fa- 
ther of his murderer, the horrible Alexander, might 
be entreated to pronounce his absolution. The same 
Alexander was nearly suffocated in the Vatican by 
the French soldiers who crowded round to kiss his 
mantle, and who had made him tremble for his life 
a few days previously. Cellini on his knees im- 
plored Pope Clement to absolve him from the guilt 
of homicide and theft, yet spoke of him as ' trans- 
formed to a savage beast' by a sudden access of 
fury. At one time he trembled before the awful 
majesty of Christ's Vicar, revealed in Paul III. ; at 
a<>other he reviled him as a man * who neither be- 



SANCTITY OF THE POPE, 463 

lieved in God nor in any other article of religion. 
A mysterious sanctity environed the person of the 
Pontiff. When Gianpaolo Baglioni held Julius II. 
in his power in Perugia, he respected the Pope's 
freedom, though he knew that Julius would over- 
throw his tyranny. Machiavelli condemns this as cow- 
ardice, but it was wholly consistent with the senti- 
ment of the age. * It cannot have been goodness 
or conscience which restrained him,' writes the phi- 
losopher of Florence, ' for the heart of a man who 
cohabited with his sister, and had massacred his 
cousins and his nephews, could not have harbored 
any piety. We must conclude that men know not 
how to be either guilty in a noble manner, or en- 
tirely good. Although crime may have a certain 
grandeur of its own, or at least a mixture of more 
generous motives, they do not attain to this. Gian- 
paolo, careless though he was about incest and par- 
ricide, could not, or dared not, on a just occasion, 
achieve an exploit for which the whole world would 
have admired his spirit, and by which he would have 
won immortal glory: for he would have been the 
first to show how little prelates, living and ruling as 
they do, deserve to be esteemed, and would have 
done a deed superior in its greatness to all the in- 
famy, to all the peril, that it might have brought 
with it.*^ It is difficult to know which to admire 

» Discorsi, i. 27, This episode in Gianpaolo Baglioni's life may 
^^e illustrated by the curious story told about Gabrino Fondulo, the 
tyrant of Cremona. The Emperor Sigismund and Pope John XXIII. 
were his guests together in the year 1414. Part ol" their cnleriaiu- 



464 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

most, the superstition of Gianpaolo, or the cynicism 
of the commentary, the spurious piety which made 
the tyrant miss his opportunity, or the false standard 
of moral sublimity by which the half-ironical critic 
measures his mistake. In combination they produce 
a lively impression of the truth of what I have at- 
tempted to establish — that in Italy at this period 
religion survived as superstition even among the 
most depraved, and that the crimes of the Church 
had produced a schism between this superstition and 
morality. 

While the Church was thus gradually deviating 
more and more directly from the Christian ideal, and 
was exhibiting to Italy an ensample of worldliness 
and evil living, the Italians, earlier than any other 
European nation, had become imbued with the spirit 
of the ancient world. Instead of the Gospel and the 
Lives of the Saints, men studied Plutarch and Livy 
with avidity. The tyrannicides of Greece and the 
suicides of the Roman Empire, patriots like Harmo- 
dius and Brutus, philosophers like Seneca and Psetus 
Thrasea, seemed to the humanists of the fifteenth cen- 
tury more admirable than the martyrs and confessors 
of the faith. Pagan virtues were strangely mingled 

ment consisted in visiting the sights of Cremona with their host, who 
took them up the great Tower (396 feet high) without any escort. 
They all three returned safely, but when Gabrino was ex/>cuted at 
Milan in 1425, he remarked that he only regretted one thing in the 
course of his life — namely, that he had not pitched Pope and Emperor 
together from the Torazzo. What a golden opportunity to have let 
sli]) ! The story is told by Antonio Campo, Historia di Cremona 
(Miliui. 1645:.. p. 1 14. 



CHRISTIANITY AND PAGANISM, 465 

with confused and ill-assimilated precepts of the 
Christian Church, while pagan vices wore a halo 
borrowed from the luster of the newly found and 
passionately welcomed poets of antiquity. Blending 
the visionary intuitions of the Middle Ages with the 
positive and mundane ethics of the ancients, the Ital- 
ians of the Renaissance strove to adopt the senti- 
ments and customs of an age long dead and not 
to be resuscitated. At the same time the rhetorical 
taste of the nation inclined the more adventurous and 
passionate natures to seek glory by dramatic exhi- 
bitions of personal heroism. The Greek ideal of ro 
naXor, the Roman conception of VirtuSy agitated the 
imagination of a people who. had been powerfully 
influenced by professors of eloquence, by public or- 
ators, by men of letters, masters in the arts of style 
and of parade. Painting and sculpture, and that 
magnificence of public life which characterized the 
fifteenth century, contributed to the substitution of 
esthetic for moral or religious standards. Actions 
were estimated by the effect which they produced; 
and to sin against the laws of culture was of more 
moment than to transgress the code of Christianity. 
Still, the men of the Renaissance could not forget 
the creed which they had drawn in with their moth- 
ers' milk, but which the Church had not adjusted to 
the new conditions of the growing age. The result 
was a wild phantasmagoric chaos of confused and 
clashing influences. 

Of this peculiar moral condition the records of the 



466 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

numerous tyrannicides supply many interesting ex 
amples.^ Girolamo Olgiati offered prayers to S. Am 
brose for protection before he stabbed the Duke of 
Milan in S. Stephen's Church.^ The Pazzi conspira- 
tors, intimidated by the sanctity of the Florentine 
Duomo, had to employ a priest to wield the sacrile- 
gious dagger.^ Pietro Paolo Boscoli's last confession, 
after the failure of his attempt to assassinate the Medici 
in 1 5 13, adds further details in illustration of the mix- 
ture of religious feeling with patriotic paganism. Luca 
della Robbia, the nephew of the great sculptor of that 
name, and himself no mean artist, visited his friend 
Boscoli on the night of his execution, and wrote a mi- 
nute account of their interview. Both of these men 
were members of the Confraternita de' Neri, who as- 
sumed the duty of comforting condemned prisoners 
with spiritual counsel, prayer, and exhortation. The 
narrative, dictated in the choicest vernacular Tuscan, 
by an artist whose charity and beauty of soul transpire 
in every line in contrast with the fiercer fortitude of 
Boscoli, is one of the most valuable original documents 
for this period which we possess.* What is most 
striking is the combination of deeply rooted and al- 
most infantine piety with antique heroism in the 
young patriot. He is greatly concerned because, ig- 
norant of his approaching end, he had eaten a hearty 
supper : ' Son troppo carico di cibo, et ho mangiatc 

> For the Italian ethics of tyrannicide, see back, pp. 169, 17a 

» See p. 166. » See p. 398. 

« It is printed in Arch. Stor. vol. i. 



BOSCOLI'S CONFESSION, 467 

cose insalate ; in modo che non mi pare poter unir lo 
spirito a Dio . . . Iddio abbi di me misericordia, che 
costoro m* hanno carico di cibo. Oh indiscrezione ! " ^ 
Then he expresses a vehement desire for the services 
cf a learned confessor, to resolve his intellectual doubts 
pleading with all the earnestness of desperate convic- 
tion that the salvation of his soul must depend upon 
his orthodoxy at the last. He complains that he ought 
to have been allowed at least a month s seclusion with 
good friars before he was brought face to face with 
death. At another time he is chiefly anxious to free 
himself from classic memories : * Deh ! Luca, cavatemi 
della testa quel Bruto, accio ch' io faccia questo passo 
interamente da Cristiano'.^ Then again it grieves him 
that the tears of compunction, which he has been 
taught to regard as the true sign of a soul at one with 
God, will not flow. About the mere fact of dying he 
has no anxiety. The philosophers have strengthened 
him upon that point. He is only eager to die piously. 
When he tries to pray, he can barely remember the 
Paternoster and the Ave Maria. That reminds him 
how easy it would have been to have spent his time 
better, and he bids Luca remember that the mind a 
man makes for himself in life, will be with him in 
death. When they bring him a picture of Christ, he 

» •! am over-burdened with food, and I have eaten salt meats; so 
that I do not seem able to join my spirit to God. . . . God have pity 
on me, for they have burdened me with food. Oh, how thoughtless 
of them ! ' His words cannot be translated. NaYf in the extreme, 
iiiey become ludicrous in English. 

• ' Ah, Luca, turn that Brutus out of my head, in order that I may 
take this last step wholly as a Christian man ! ' 



468 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

asks whether he needs that to fix his soul upon his 
Saviour. Throughout this long contention of so many 
varying thoughts, he never questions the morality of 
the act for which he is condemned to die. Luca, how- 
ever, has his doubts, and privately asks the confessor 
whether S. Thomas Aquinas had not discountenanced 
tyrannicide. * Yes/ answers the monk, * in case the 
people have elected their own tyrant, but not when he 
has imposed himself on them by force.' This casuis- 
tical answer satisfies Luca that his friend may reason- 
ably be held blameless. After confessing, Boscoli 
received the sacrament with great piety, and died 
bravely. The confessor told Luca, weeping, that he 
was sure the young man's soul had gone straight to 
Paradise, and that he might be reckoned a real mar- 
tyr. His head after death was like that of an angel ; 
and Luca was, we know, a connoisseur in angels* 
heads. Boscoli was only thirty-two years of age ; he 
had light hair, and was short-sighted. 

To this narrative might be added the apology 
written by Lorenzino de' Medici, after the murder of 
his cousin Alessandro in 1536.^ He relies for his de- 
fense entirely upon arguments borrowed from Pagan 
ethics, and by his treatment of the subject vindicates 
for himself that name of Brutus with which Filippo 
Strozzi in person at Venice, and Varchi and Molsa in 
Latin epigrams, saluted him. There is no trace of 

' It is printed at the end of the third volume of Varchi, pp. 283-95; 
compare p. 2T0. A medal in honor of Lorenzino's tyrannicide was 
struck with a profile copied from Michael Angelo's bust of Brutus. 



TENACITY OF CREEDS, 469 

Qiristian feeling in this strong and splendid display 
of rhetorical ability ; nor does any document of the 
age more forcibly exhibit the extent to which classical 
studies had influenced the morality of the Renaissance. 
Lorenzino, however, when he wrote it, was not, like 
Boscoli, upon the point of dying. 

The last thing to perish in a nation is its faith. 
The whole history of the world proves that no anom- 
alies are so glaring, no inconsistencies so paradoxical, 
as to sap the credit of a religious system which has 
once been firmly rooted in the habits, instincts, and 
traditions of a race: and what remains longest is often 
the least rational portion. Religions from the first are 
not the product of logical reflection or experiment, but 
of sentiment and aspiration. They come into being 
as simple intuitions, and afterwards invade the prov- 
ince of the reason and assimilate the thought of cen- 
turies to their own conceptions. This is the secret 
of their strength as well as the source of their weak- 
ness. It is only a stronger enthusiasm, a new intui- 
tion, a fresh outburst of emotional vitality, that can 
supplant the old : — 

• Cotal rimedio ha questo aspro furore. 
Tale acqua suole spegner questo fuoco, 
Come d'asse si trae chiodo con chiodo.* 

Criticism from without, internal corruption, patent ab- 
surdity, are comparatively powerless to destroy those 
habits of belief which once have taken hold upon the 
fancy and the feeling of a nation. The work of disso- 
lution proceeds in silence and in secret. Rut the es- 



470 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

tabh'iihed order subsists until the moment comes for a 
new synthesis. And in the sixteenth century the nec- 
essary impulse of regeneration was to come, not from 
Italy, satisfied with the serenity of her art, preoccu- 
pied with her culture, and hardened to the infamy of 
'ler corruption, but from the Germany of the barbari- 
ms she despised. 

\ These considerations will help to explain how it 
was that the Church, in spite of its corruption, stood 
its ground and retained the respect of the people in 
Italy. We must moreover bear in mind that, bad 
as it was, it still to some extent maintained the 
Christian verity. Apart from the Roman Curia and 
the Convents, there existed a hierarchy of able and 
God-fearing men, who by the sanctity of their lives, 
by the gravity of their doctrine, by the eloquence 
of their preaching, by their ministration to the sick, 
by the relief of the poor, by the maintenance of hospi- 
tals, Monti di Pieta, schools and orphanages, kept 
alive in the people of Italy the ideal at least of a 
religion pure and undefiled before God.^ In the 
tottering statue of the Church some true metal might 
be found between the pinchbeck at the summit and 
the clay of the foundation. 

It must also be remembered how far the worldly 
interests and domestic sympathies of the Italians were 
engaged in the maintenance of their Church system. 
The fibers of the Church were intertwined with the 
very heartstrings of the people. Few families could 

> See the life of S. Antonino, the '.niod Archbishop of Florence. 



ATTACHMENT TO CHURCH SYSTEM. 47 1 

not show one or more members who had chosen 
the clerical career, and who looked to Rome for 
patronage, employment, and perhaps advancement 
to the highest honors. The whole nation felt a pride 
in the Eternal City: patriotic vanity and personal 
interest were alike involved in the maintenance of 
the metropolis of Christendom, which drew the suites 
of ambassadors, multitudes of pilgrims, and the re- 
ligious traffic of the whole of Europe to the shores 
of Italy. It was easy for Germans and Englishmen 
to reason calmly about dethroning the Papal hier- 
archy. Italians, however they might loathe the tem- 
poral power, could not willingly forego the spiritual 
primacy of the civilized world. 

Moreover, the sacraments of the Church, the 
absolutions, consecrations, and benedictions which 
priests dispensed or withheld at pleasure, had by no 
means lost their power. To what extent even the 
nations of the north still clung to them is proved by 
our own Liturgy, framed in the tumult of war with 
Rome, yet so worded as to leave the utmost resem- 
blance to the old ritual consistent with the spirit of 
the Reformation. Far more imposing were they in 
their effect upon the imagination of Italians, who had 
never dreamed of actual rebellion, who possessed the 
fountain of Apostolical privileges in the person of the 
Pope, and whose southern temperament inclined them 
to a more sensuous and less metaphysical conception 
of Christianity than the Germans or the English. 
The dread of the Papal Interdict was still a reality. 



47» RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

Though the clergy of Florence, roused to retaliative 
fury, might fling back in the teeth of Sixtus such 
words as leTto matris sucBy adulterorum minister^ 
diaboli vicar ius, yet the people could not long en- 
dure * the niggardly and imperfect rites, the baptism 
sparingly administered, the extreme unction or the 
last sacrament coldly vouchsafed to the chosen few, 
the churchyard closed against the dead,' which, to 
quote the energetic language of Dean Milman,^ were 
the proper fruits of the Papal ban, however unjustly 
issued and however manfully resisted. 

The history of the despots and the Popes, to- 
gether with the analysis of Machiavelli's political 
ethics, prove the demoralization of a society in which 
crimes so extravagant could have their origin, and 
cynicism so deliberate could be accepted as a system. 
Yet it remains in estimating the general character of 
Italian morality to record the judgment passed upon 
it by foreign nations of a different complexion. The 
morality of races, as of individuals, is rarely other- 
wise than mixed — virtue balancing vice and evil 
vitiating goodness. Still the impression produced by 
Renaissance Italy upon observers from the North ^ 
was almost wholly bad. Our own ancestors returned 
from their Italian travels either horrified with what 
they had witnessed, or else contaminated. Ascham 
writes: 2 *I was once in Italy myself; but I thank 

> Latin Christianity, vol. vi. p. 361. 

• The Schoolmaster, edn. 1863, p. 87. The whole discourse on 
Italian traveling and Italian influence is very curious, when we re- 
flect that at this time contact with Italy was forming the chief culture 



VERDICT OF FOREIGNERS, 473 

God my abode there was but nine days ; and yet I 
saw in that little time, in one city, more liberty to 
sin than ever I heard tell of in our noble City of 
London in nine years. I saw it was there as free 
to sin, not only without all punishment, but also 
without any man's marking, as it is free in the City 
of London to choose without all blame whether a 
man lust to wear shoe or pantocle/ Robert Greene, 
who did so much to introduce the novels of Italy 
into England, confesses that during his youthful travels 
in the south he * saw and practiced such villany as it 
is abominable to declare/^ The whole of our dra- 
matic literature corroborates these witnesses, while 
the proverb, Inglese Italianato e un diavolo incarnato, 
quoted by Sidney, Howell, Parker, Ascham, shows 
how pernicious to the coarser natures of the north 
were the refined vices of the south. What princi- 
pally struck our ancestors in the morality of the 
Italians was the license allowed in sensual indul- 
gences, and the bad faith which tainted all public 
and private dealings. In respect to the latter point, 
what has already been said about Machiavelli is 



ot the English in literature and social manners. The ninth satire in 
Marston's Scourge of Villanie contains much interesting matter on 
the same point Howell's Instructions for forreine Travell furnishes 
the following illustration; • And being in Italy, that great limbique 
of working braines, he must be very circumspect in his carriage, for 
she is able to tume a Saint into a deviil, and deprave the best na- 
tures, if one will abandon himself, and become a prey to dissolute 
courses and wantonnesse.' 

« The Repentance of Robert Greene, quoted in the memoir tc 
Dyce's edition of his Dramatic Works. 



474 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

enough.^ Loyalty was a virtue but little esteemed 
in Italy : engagements seemed made to be broken : 
even the crime of violence was aggravated by the 
crime of perfidy, a bravo's stiletto or a slow poison 
being reckoned among the legitimate means for 
ridding men of rivals or for revenging a slight. 
Yet it must not be forgotten that the commercial 
integrity of the Italians ranked high. In all coun- 
tries of Europe they carried on the banking business 
of monarchs, cities, and private persons. 

With reference to carnal vice, it cannot be denied 
that the corruption of Italy was shameful. Putcing 
aside the profligacy of the convents, the City of 
Rome in 1490 is reported to have held as niany 
as 6,800 public prostitutes, besides those who prac- 
ticed their trade under the cloak of concubinage.^ 
These women were accompanied by confederate 
ruffians, ready to stab, poison, and extort money; 
thus violence and lust went hand in hand, and to 
this profligate lower stratum of society may be as- 
cribed the crimes of lawlessness which rendered 



« See chapter v. 

« Infessura, p. 1997. He adds: ' Consideratur modo qualiter 

vivatur Romce ubi caput fidei est.' From what Parent Duchatelet 
{Prostitution dans la Ville de Paris, p. 27) has noted concerning the 
tendency to exaggerate the numbers of prostitutes in any given town, 
we have every reason to regard the estimate of Infessura as exces- 
sive. In Paris, in 1854, there were only 4,206 registered ' filles pub- 
liques,' when the population of the city numbered 1,500,000 persons; 
while those who exercised their calling clandestinely were variously 
cjmputed at 20,000 or 40,000 and upwards to 60,000. Accurate sta- 
tistics relating to the population of any Italian city in the fifteenth 
century do not, unfortunately, exist. 



PROSTITUTION. 475 

Rome under Innocent VI 1 1, almost uninhabitable. 
Venice, praised for its piety by De Comines,^ was 
the resort of all the debauchees of Europe who 
could afford the time and money to visit this mod- 
ern Corinth. Tom Coryat, the eccentric English 
traveler, gives a curious account of the splendor 
and refinement displayed by the demi-monde of 
the laeoons, and Marston describes Venice as a 
school of luxury in which the monstrous Aretine 
played professor.^ Of the state of morals In Flor- 
ence Savonarola's sermons give the best picture. 

■ But the characteristic vice of the Italian was not 
coarse sensuality. He required the fascination of 
the fancy to be added to the allurement of the 
senses.^ It is this which makes the Capitoll of the 
burlesque poets, of men of note like Berni, La Casa, 
VarchI, Mauro, Molsa, Dolce, Bembo, FIrenzuola, 
Bronzino, AretIno, and de' Medici, so amazing. 

> Memoirs, lib. vii. * Cest la plus triomphante cit^ que j'ai jamais 
vue, et qui plus fait d'honneur a, ambassadeurs et strangers, et qui 
plus sagement se gouverne, et ou le service de Dieu est le plus sol- 
evzjtelleinent faict' The prostitutes of Venice were computed to 
number 11,654 so far back as the end of the 14th century. See 
Filiasi, quoted by Mutinelli in his Atmali urbani di Venezia. 

8 Satires, ii. 

3 Much might be written about the play of the imagination which 
gave a peculiar complexion to the profligacy, the jealousy, and the 
vengeance of the Italians. I shall have occasion elsewhere to main- 
tain that in their literature at least the Italians were not a highly im- 
aginative race; nor were they subject to those highly wrought con- 
ditions of the brooding fancy, termed by the northern nations 
Melancholy, which Diirer has personified in his celebrated etching 
and Burton has described in his Anatomy. But in their love and 
hatred, their lust and their cruelty, the Italians required an intel- 
lectual element which brought the ima"-imti\ t; f.-'ciiUy into play. 



476 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

The crudest forms of debauchery receive the most 
refined and highly finished treatment in poems which 
are as »'emarkable for their wit as for their cynicism. 
A like vein of elaborate innuendo runs through the 
Cantt Carnascialeschi of Florence, proving that how- 
ever profligate the people might have been, they 
were not contented with grossness unless seasoned 
with wit. The same excitement of the fancy, play- 
ing freely in the lawlessness of sensual self-indul- 
gence and heightening the consciousness of per- 
sonal force in the agent, rendered the exercise of 
ingenuity or the avoidance of peril an enhance- 
ment of pleasure to the Italians. This is perhaps 
one of the reasons why all the imaginative com- 
positions of the Renaissance, especially the Novelky 
turn upon adultery. Judging by the majority of 
these romances, by the comedies of the time, and 
by the poetry of Ariosto, we are compelled to be- 
lieve that such illicit love was merely sensual, and 
owed its principal attractions to the scope it af- 
forded for whimsical adventures. Yet Bcmbo's 
Asolani, Castiglione's panegyric of Platonic Love, 
and much of the lyrical poetry in vogue warn us 
to be cautious. The old romantic sentiment ex- 
pressed by the Florentines of the thirteenth cen- 
tury still survived to some extent, adding a sort 
of dignity in form at least to these affections. 

V It was due again in a great measure to their 
demand for imaginative excitement in all matters 
of the sense, to their desire for \\\v ('\tr?VrT/ant 



IMAGINATIVE EXCITEMENT, 477 

and extraordinary as a seasoning of pleasure, that 
the Italians came to deserve so terrible a name 
among the nations for unnatural passions.^. This is 
a subject which can hardly be couched in passing: 
yet the opinion may be recorded that it belongs 
rather to the science of psychopathy than to the 
chronicle of vulgar lusts. English poets have given 
us the right key to the Italian temperament, on this 
as on so many other points. Shelley in his portrait 
of Francesco Cenci has drawn a man in whom 
cruelty and incest have become appetites of the 
distempered soul; the love of Giovanni and An- 
nabella in Ford's tragedy is rightly depicted as 
more imaginative than sensual. It is no excuse 
for the Italians to say that they had spiritualized 

I Italian literature is loud-voiced on this* topic. The concluding 

stanzas of Poliziano's Orfeo, recited before the Cardinal of Mantua, 
the Capitoli of Berni, Bronzino, La Casa, and some of the Canti Car- 
nasialeschi, might be cited. We might add Varchi's express testi- 
mony as to the morals of Filippo Strozzi, Lorenzino de' Medici, Pier 
Luigi Farnese, and Clement VII. What Segni (lib. x. p. 409) tells 
us about the brave Giovanni Bandini is also very significant. In the 
Life of San Bernardino of Siena, Vespasiano {Vite di Illustri Uomini, 
p. 186) writes: ' L'ltalia, ch' era piena di queste tenebre, e aveva 
lasciata ogni norma di buoni costumi, e non era piCi chi conoscesse 
Iddio. Tanto erano sommersi e sepulti ne' maladetti e abbominevoli 
vizi nefandi ! Gli avevano in modo messi in uso, che non temevano 
n6 Iddio n^ I'onore del mondo. Maladetta cecitk ! In tanto eccesso 
era venuto ogni cosa, che gli scellerati ed enormi vizi non era piu chi 
gli stimasse, per lo maladetto uso che n' avevano fatto. . . . massime 
11 maladetto e abominando e detestando peccato della sodomia. 
Erano in modo stracorsi in questa cecity, che bisognava che I'onnip- 
otente Iddio facesse un' altra volta piovere dal cielo zolfo e fuoco 
come egli fece a Sodoma e Gomorra.* Compare Savonarola passim, 
Cwn. inductions to the Sacre Rappresentazioni, the familiar letter* of 
Machiavelli, and the statute of Cosimo against this vice (year 1 542, 
Sabellii Summa. Venice, 17 15; vol. v. p. 287). 



478 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

abominable vices. What this really means is that 
their immorality was nearer that of devils than of 
beasts. But in seeking to distinguish its true char- 
acter, we must take notice of the highly wrought 
fantasy which seasoned both their luxury and their 
jealousy, their vengeance and their lust. 

The same is to some extent true of their cruelty. 
The really cruel nation of the Renaissance was Spain, 
not Italy.i The Italians, as a rule, were gentle and 
humane, especially in warfare.^ No Italian army 
would systematically have tortured the whole popula- 
tion of a captured city day after day for months, as 
the Spaniards did in Rome and Milan, to satisfy their 
avarice and glut their stolid appetite for blood. Their 
respect for human life again was higher than that of 
the French or Swiss. They gave quarter to their 
foes upon the battle-field, and were horrified with 
the massacres in cold blood perpetrated at Fivizzano 
and Rapallo by the army of Charles VIII. But when 
the demon of cruelty possessed the imagination of an 
Italian, when, like Gian Maria Visconti, he came to 
relish the sight of torment for its own sake, or when he 
sought to inspire fear by the spectacle of pain, then no 
Spaniard surpassed him in the ingenuity of his devices. 



> Those who wish to gain a lively notion of Spanish cruelty in 
Italy should read, besides the accounts of the Sacco di Roma by 
Guicciardini and Buonaparte, the narrative of the Sacco di Prato in 
the Archivio Storico Italiano, vol. i., and Cagnola's account of the 
Spanish occupation of Milan, ib. vol. iii. 

* De Comines more than once notices the humanity shown by the 
Italian peasants to the French army. 



CRUELTY AND DEBAUCHERY. 479 

In gratifying his thirst for vengeance he was never con- 
tented with mere murder. To obtain a personal tri- 
umph at the expense of his enemy by the display of 
superior cunning, by rendering him ridiculous, by ex- 
posing him to mental as well as physical anguish, by 
wounding him through his affections or his sense of 
honor, was the end which he pursued. This is why 
so many acts of violence in Italy assumed fantastic 
forms. Even the country folk showed an infernal art 
in the execution of their vendette. To serve the flesh 
of children up to their fathers at a meal of courtesy is 
mentioned, for example, as one mode of wreaking ven- 
geance in country villages. Thus the high culture and 
aesthetic temperament of the Italians gave an intellect- 
ual quality to their vices. Crude lust and bloodshed 
were insipid to their palates: they required the pun- 
gent sauce of a melodramatic catastrophe. 

The drunkenness and gluttony of northern nations 
for a like reason found no favor in Italy. It disgusted 
the Romans beyond measure to witness the swinish 
excesses of the Germans. Their own sensuality 
prompted them to a refined Epicureanism in food 
and drink; on this point, however, it must be admitted 
that the prelates, here as elsewhere foremost in profli- 
gacy, disgraced the age of Leo with banquets worthy 
of Vitellius.i We trace the same play of the fanc3% 
the same promptitude to quicken and intensify the im- 
mediate sense of personality at any cost of after-suf- 

» See Gregorovius, Stadt Rom, vol. viii. p. 225: 'E li cardinal! 

comen/.nrono a vomitar e cussi li altri,' quoted from Sanudo. 



48o RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

fering, in another characteristic vice of the Italians. 
Gambling among them was carried further and pro- 
duced more harm than it did in the transalpine cities. 
This we gather from Savonarola's denunciations, from 
the animated pictures drawn by Alberti in his Trattato 
della Famiglia and Cena delta Famiglia and also from 
the inductions to many of the Sacre Rappresenta- 
zioni} 

Another point which struck a northern visitor in 
Italy was the frequency of private and domestic mur- 
ders.2 The Italians had and deserved a bad reputation 
for poisoning and assassination. To refer to the deeds 
of violence in the history of a single family, the Bagli- 
oni of Perugia, as recorded by their chronicler Mata- 
razzo; to cite the passages in which Varchi relates the 
deaths by poison of Luisa Strozzi, Cardinal Ippolito de* 
Medici, and Sanga; or to translate the pages of annal- 
ists, who describe the palaces of nobles swarming with 
hraviy would be a very easy task.^ But the sketch of 
Benvenuto Cellini's autobiography, which will form 



« One of the excellent characteristics of Alfonso the Great ( Vespa* 

siano, p. 49) was his abhorrence of gambling. 

2 See Guicc. Si. It, vol. i. p. loi, for the impression produced 
upon the army of Charles by the murder by poison of Gian Galeazzo 
Sforza. 

s A vivid illustration of the method adopted by hired assassins in 
tracking and hunting down their victims is presented by Francesco 
Bibboni's narrative of his murder of Lorenzino de' Medici at Venice. 
It casts much curious light, moreover, on the relations between paid 
bravi and their employers, the esteem in which professional cut- 
throats were held, and their connection with the police of the Italian 
towns. It is published in a tract concerning Lorenzino, 
Daelli. 1862. 



HONOR, 481 

part of my third volume, gives so lively a picture of 
this aspect of Italian life, that there is no reason to 
enlarge upon the topic now. It is enough to observe 
that, in their employment of poison and of paid assas- 
sins, the Italians were guided by those habits of cal- 
culation which distinguished their character.^ They 
thought nothing of removing an enemy by craft or 
violence: but they took no pleasure in murder for its 
own sake.^ The object which they had in view 
prompted them to take a man's life; the mere delight 
in brawls and bloodshed of Switzers, Germans, and 
Spaniards offended their taste. 

While the imagination played so important a part 
in the morality of the Italians, it must be remembered 
that they were deficient in that which is the highest 
imaginative safeguard against vice, a scrupulous sense 
of honor. It is true that the Italian authors talk much 
about Onore. Pandolfini tells his sons that Onore is 
one of the qualities which require the greatest thrift 
in keeping, and Machiavelli asserts that it is almost 
as dangerous to attack men in their Onore as in their 
property. But when we come to analyze the word, 
we find that it means something different from that 
mixture of conscience, pride, and self-respect which 

» See the instructions given by the Venetian government to their 
agents for the purchase of poisoa and the hiring of secret murderers. 
See also the Maxims laid down by Sarpi. 

* This at least was accounted eccentric and barbarous in the ex- 
treme. See Pontano, de Immanitate, vol. i. p. 326, concerning Nic- 
colo Fortibraccio, Antonio, Pontadera, and the Riccio Montechiaro, 
who stabbed and strangled for the pleasure of seeing men die. I 
have already discussed the blood -madness of some of the despots. 



482 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

makes a man true to a high Ideal in all the possible 
circumstances of life. The Italian Onore consisted 
partly of the credit attaching to public distinction, 
and partly of a reputation for Virtu, understanding 
that word in its Machiavellian usage, as force, cour- 
age, ability, virility. It was not incompatible with 
craft and dissimulation, or with the indulgence of 
sensual vices. Statesmen like Guicciardini, who, by 
the way, has written a fine paragraph upon the very 
word in question, ^ did not think it unworthy of their 
honor to traffic in affairs of state for private profit. 
Machiavelli not only recommended breaches of po- 
litical faith, but sacrificed his principles to his pe- 
cuniary interests with the Medici. It would be 
curious to inquire how far the obtuse sensibility of 
the Italians on this point was due to their free- 
dom from vanity. 2 No nation is perhaps less in- 
fiuenced by mere opinion, less inclined to value 
men by their adventitious advantages: the Italian 
has the courage and the independence of his person- 
ality. It is, however, more important to take notice 
that Chivalry never took a firm root in Italy; and 
honor, as distinguished from vanity, amour propre^ 



' Ricordi politici e civili, No. 118, Op. Ined. vol. i. 

' See De Stendhal, Histoire de la peinture en Italie, pp. 285-91, 
for a curious catalogue of examples. The modem sense of honor is 
based, no doubt, to some extent on a delicate amour propre, which 
makes a man desirous of winning the esteem of his neighbors for its 
own sake. Granting that conscience, pride, vanity, and self-respect 
are all constituents of honor, we may, perhaps, find more pride in the 
Spanish, more amour propre in the French, and more conscience in 
the English. 



ABSENCE OF CHIVALRY. 483 

and credit, draws its life from that ideal of the knightly 
character which Chivalry established. The true knight 
was equally sensitive upon the point of honor, in all 
that concerned the maintenance of an unsullied self, 
whether he found himself in a king's court or a 
robber's den. Chivalry, as epitomized in the cele- 
brated oath imposed by Arthur on his peers of the 
Round Table, was a northern, a Teutonic, institution. 
The sense of honor which formed its very essence 
was further developed by the social atmosphere of 
a monarch's court. It became the virtue of the 
nobly born and chivalrously nurtured, as appears 
very remarkably in this passage from Rabelais^: 
* En leur reigle n'estoit que ceste clause: Fay ce 
que vouldras. Parce que gens liberes, bien nayz, 
bien instruictz, conversans en compalgnies honnes- 
tles, ont par nature ung instinct et aguillon qui tou- 
jours les poulse a faitctz vertueux, et retire de vice: 
lequel ils nommoyent honneur.' Now in Italy not 
only was Chivalry as an institution weak; but the 
feudal courts in which it produced its fairest flower, 
the knightly sense of honor, did not exist.^ Instead 
of a circle of peers gathered from all quarters of the 
kingdom round the font of honor in the person of 
the sovereign, commercial republics, forceful tyran- 
nies, and the Papal Curia gave the tone to society. 



' Gargantua, lib. 1. ch. 57. 

• See, however, what I have already said about Castiglione and 
his ideal of the courtier in Chapter III. We nr ist remember that he 
represents a late period of the Renaissance. 



484 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

In eTery part of the peninsula rich bankers who 
bought and sold cities, adventurers who grasped 
at principalities by violence or intrigue, and priests 
who sought the aggrandizement of a sacerdotal cor- 
poration, were brought together in the meshes of 
diplomacy. The few noble families which claimed 
a feudal origin carried on wars for pay by contract 
in the interest of burghers, popes, or despots. Of 
these conditions not one was conducive to the sense 
of honor as conceived in France or England. Taken 
altogether and in combination, they could not fai^ to 
be eminently unfavorable to its development. In 
such a society Bayard and Sir Walter Manny would 
have been out of place: the motto noblesse oblxge 
would have had but little meaning.^ Instead of 
Honor, Virtu ruled the world in Italy. The moral 
atmosphere again was critical and highly intellect- 
ualized. Mental ability combined with personal dar- 
ing gave rank. But the very subtlety and force of 
mind which formed the strength of the Italians 
proved hostile to any delicate sentiment of honor. 
Analysis enfeebles the tact and spontaneity of feel- 
ing which constitute its strongest safeguard. All 
this is obvious in the ethics of the Principe, What 
most astounds us in that treatise is the assumption 
that no men will be bound by laws of honor when 



I It is curious to compare, for example, the part played by Ital- 
ians, especially by Venice, Pisa, Genoa, Amalfi, as contractors and 
merchants in the Crusades, with the enthusiasm of the northern 
nations. 



FEMALE HONESTY, 485 

Utility or the object in view require their sacrifice. 
In conclusion; although the Italians were not lack- 
ing in integrity, honesty, probity, or pride, their 
positive and highly analytical genius was but little 
influenced by that chivalrous honor which was an 
enthusiasm and a religion to the feudal nations, sur- 
viving the decay of chivalry as a preservative in- 
stinct more undefinable than absolute morality. Hon- 
or with the northern gentry was subjective; with the 
Italians Onore was objective — ^an addition conferred 
from without, in the shape of reputation, glory, titles 
of distinction, or offices of trust.^ 

With the Italian conception of Ofiore we may 
compare their view of Onesth in the female sex. 
This is set forth plainly by Piccolomini in La Bella 
Creanza delle DonneP' As in the case of Onvre, we 
have here to deal, not with an exquisite personal 
ideal, but with something far more material and ex- 
ternal. The onestdi. of a married woman is compat- 

> In confirmation of this view I may call attention to Giannotti's 
critique of tlie Florentine constitution (Florence, 1850, vol. i. pp. 15 
and 156), and to what Machiavelli says about Gianpaolo Baglioni 
{Disc. i. 27), *Gli uomini non sanno essere onorevohnente tristi '; 
men know not how to be bad with credit to themselves. The con- 
text proves that Gianpaolo failed to win the honor of a signal crime. 
Compare the use of the word onore in Lorinzino de' Medici's * Apo- 
logia.' 

« La Raffaella, ovvero Delia bella Creanza delle Donne (Milano, 
Daelli). Compare the statement of the author in his preface, p. 4, 
where he speaks in his own person, with the definition of Onore 
given by Raffaella, pp. 50 and 51 of the Dialogue: ' I'onore non ^ 
riposto in altro, se non nella stimazione appresso agli uomini . . . 
I'onor della donna non consiste, come t'ho detto, nel fare o non fare, 
ch6 questo importa poco, ma nel credersi o non credersi.' 



486 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

ible with secret infidelity, provided she does not ex- 
pose herself to ridicule and censure by letting her 
amour be known. Here again, therefore, the proper 
translation of the word seems to be credit. Finally, 
we may allude to the invective against honor which 
Tasso puts into the mouths of his shepherds in 
Aminta} Though at this period the influence of 
I'Vance and Spain had communicated to aristocratic 
society in Italy an exotic sense of honor, yet a court 
poet dared to condemn it as unworthy of the Beir 
eta deir oro, because it interfered with pleasure and 
introduced disagreeable duties into life. Such a ti- 
rade would not have been endured in the Lon- 
don of Elizabeth or in the Paris of Louis XIV. 
Tasso himself, it may be said in passing, was al- 
most feverishly punctilious in matters that touched 
his reputation. 

An important consideration, affecting the whole 
question of Italian immorality, is this. Whereas 
the northern races had hitherto remained in a state 
of comparative poverty and barbarism, distributed 
through villages and country districts, the people of 
Italy had enjoyed centuries of wealth and civilization 
in great cities. Their towns were the centers of lux- 
urious life. The superfluous income of the rich was 
spent in pleasure, nor had modern decorum taught 

I This invective might be paralleled from one ot Masuccio's 
Novelle (ed. Napoli, pp. 389, 390), in which he almost cynically ex- 
poses the inconvenience of self-respect and delicacy. The situation 
of two friends, who agree that honor is a nuisance and share their 
wives in common, is a favorite of the Novelists. 



ITALIAN MORALITY. 487 

them to conceal the vices of advanced culture beneath 
the cloak of propriety. They were at the same time 
both indifferent to opinion and self-conscious in a high 
degree. The very worst of them was seen at a glance 
and recorded with minute particularity. The de- 
pravity of less cultivated races remained unnoticed 
because no one took the trouble to describe mere 
barbarism.^ Vices of the same sort, but less widely 
dispersed, perhaps, throughout the people, were no- 
torious in Italy, because they were combined with so 
much that was beautiful and splendid. In a word, the 
faults of the Italians were such as belong to a highly 
intellectualized society, as yet but imperfectly pene- 
trated with culture, raised above the brutishness of 
barbarians, but not advanced to the self-control of 
civilization, hampered by the corruption of a Church 
that trafficked in crime, tainted by uncritical contact 
with pagan art and literature, and emasculated by po- 
litical despotism. Their vices, bad as they were In 
reality, seemed still worse because they attacked the 
imagination instead of merely exercising the senses. 
As a correlative to their depravity, we find a sobriety 
of appetite, a courtesy of behavior, a mildness and 
cheerfulness of disposition, a widely diffused refine- 
ment of sentiment and manners, a liberal spirit of 
toleration, which can nowhere else be paralleled in 
Europe at that period. It was no small mark of su- 
periority to be less ignorant and gross than England, 

> Read, however, the Saxon Chronicles or the annals of Ireland in 
Froude. 



488 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

less brutal and stolid than Germany, less rapacious 
than Switzerland, less cruel than Spain, less vain and 
inconsequent than France. 

Italy again was the land of emancipated individ- 
uality. What Mill in his Essay on Liberty desired, 
what seems every day more unattainable in modern 
life, was enjoyed by the Italians. There was no check 
to the growth of personality, no grinding of men down 
to match the average. If great vices emerged more 
openly than they did elsewhere in Europe, great qual- 
ities also had the opportunity of free development 
in heroes like Ferrucci, in saints like Savonarola, in 
artists like Michael Angelo. While the social atmos- 
phere of the Papal and despotic courts was unfavor- 
able to the highest type of character, we find at least 
no external engine of repression, no omnipotent in- 
quisition, no overpowering aristocracy.^ False polit- 
ical systems and a corrupt Church created a malaria, 
which poisoned the noble spirits of Machiavelli, Ari- 
osto, Guicciardini, Giuliano della Rovere. It does 
not, however, follow therefore that the humanities of 
the race at large, in spite of superstition and bad 
government, were vitiated. 

We have positive proofs to the contrary in the art 
of the Italians. The April freshness of Giotto, the 
piety of Fra Angelico, the virginal purity of the young 
Raphael, the sweet gravity of John Bellini, the philo- 



* I am of course speaking of the Renaissance as distinguished 
from that new phase of Italian history which followed the Council of 
Trent and the Spanish despotism. 



ITALIAN ART, 489 

sophic depth of Da Vinci, the sublime elevation of 
Michael Angelo, the suavity of Fra Bartolommeo, the 
delicacy of the Delia Robbia, the restrained fervor 
of Rosellini, the rapture of the Sienese and the rev- 
erence of the Umbrian masters, Francia's pathos, 
Mantegna's dignity, and Luini's divine simplicity, 
were qualities which belonged not only to these art- 
ists but also to the people of Italy from whom they 
sprang. If men not few of whom were born in cot- 
tages and educated in workshops could feel and think 
and fashion as they did, we cannot doubt that their 
mothers and their friends were pure and pious, and 
that the race which gave them to the world was not 
depraved. Painting in Italy, it must be remembered, 
was nearer to the people than literature : it was less a 
matter of education than instinct, a product of tem- 
perament rather than of culture. 

Italian art alone suffices to prove to my mind that 
the immorality of the age descended from the uppei 
stratum of society downwards. Selfish despots and 
luxurious priests were the ruin of Italy ; and the bad 
qualities of the princes, secular and ecclesiastical, found 
expression in the literature of poets and humanists, 
their parasites. But in what other nation of the 
fifteenth century can we show the same of social 
urbanity and intellectual light diffused throughout all 
classes from the highest to the lowest? It is true 
that the sixteenth century cast a blight upon their 
luster. But it was not until Italian taste had been 
Mnpaired by the vices of Papal Rome and by contact 



49© RBIfAISSAirCE IN ITALY. 

With the Spaniards that the arts became either coarse 
or sensual. Giulio Romano (149 2- 1546) and Ben- 
venuto Cellini (i5oo-7o) mark the beginning of the 
change. In Riberia, a Spaniard, in Caravaggio, and 
in the whole school of Bologna, it was accomplished. 
Yet never at any period did the native Italian masters 
learn to love ugliness with the devotion that reveals 
innate grossness. It remained for Diirer, Rembrandt, 
and Hogarth to elevate the grotesque into the region 
of high art, for Rubens to achieve the apotheosis of 
pure animalism, for Teniers to devote distinguished 
genius to the service of the commonplace. 

In any review of Italian religion and morality, 
however fragmentary it may be, as this indeed is, 
one feature which distinguishes the acute sensibility 
of the race ought not to be omitted. Deficient in 
profound intellectual convictions, incapable of a fixed 
and radical determination towards national holiness, 
devoid of those passionate and imaginative intuitions 
into the mysteries of the world which generate re- 
ligions and philosophies, the Italians were at the 
same time keenly susceptible to the beauty of the 
Christian faith revealed to them by inspired orators. 
What we call Revivalism was an institution in Italy, 
which the Church was too wise to discountenance 
or to suppress, although the preachers of repentance 
were often insubordinate and sometimes even hostile 
to the Papal system. The names of Arnold of 
Brescia, San Bernardino of Siena, John of Vicenza, 
Jacopo Bussolari, Alberto da Lecce, Giovanni C.'?- 



REVIVALISM. 491 

pistrano, Jacopo della Marca, Girolamo Savonarola, 
bring before the memory of those who are acquainted 
with Italian history innumerable pictures of riiultitudes 
commoved to tears, of tyrannies destroyed and con- 
^stitutions founded by tumultuous assemblies, of hos- 
tile parties and vindictive nobles locked in fraternal 
embraces, of cities clothed in sackcloth for their sins, 
of exhortations to peace echoing by the banks of 
rivers swollen with blood, of squares and hillsides 
resonant with sobs, of Lenten nights illuminated with 
bonfires of Vanity.^ In the midst of these melodra- 
matic scenes towers the single form of a Dominican 
or Franciscan friar : while one voice thundering woe 
or pleading peace dominates the crowd. Of the tem- 
porary effects produced by these preachers there can 
be no question. The changes which they wrought 
in states and cities prove that the enthusiasm they 
aroused was more than merely hysterical. Savo- 
narola, the greatest of his class, founded not only a 
transient commonwealth in Florence, but also a 
political party of importance, and left his lasting 
impress on the greatest soul of the sixteenth century 
in Italy — Michael Angelo Buonarroti. There was a 
real religious vigor in the people corresponding to 
the preacher's zeal. But the action of this earnest 
mood was intermittent and spasmodic. It coex- 
isted with too much superstition and with passions 
too vehemently restless to form a settled tone of 

» I have th own into an appendix some ot the principal passages 
from the chronicles about revivals in mediaeval Italy. 



49> RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

character. In this respect the Italian nation stands 
not extravagantly pictured in the life of Cellini, whose 
violence, self-indulgence, keen sense of pleasure, and 
pagan delight in physical beauty were interrupted 
at intervals by inexplicable interludes of repentance, 
Bible-reading, psalm-singing, and visions. To de- 
lineate Cellini will be the business of a distant chapter. 
The form of the greatest of Italian preachers must 
occupy the foreground of the next 

Before closing the imperfect and scattered notices 
collected in this chapter, it will be well to attempt 
some recapitulation of the points already suggested. 
Without committing ourselves to the dogmatism of 
a theory, we are led to certain general conclusions 
on the subject of Italian society in the sixteenth 
century. The fierce party quarrels which closed the 
Middle Ages had accustomed the population to vio- 
lence, and this violence survived in the too frequent 
occurrence of brutal crimes. The artificial sover- 
eignty of the despots being grounded upon per- 
fidy, it followed that guile and fraud came to be 
recognized in private no less than public life. With 
the emergence of the bourgeois classes a self-satis- 
fied positivism, vividly portrayed in the person of 
Cosimo de' Medici, superseded the passions and 
enthusiasms of a previous age. Thus force, craft, 
and practical materialism formed the basis of Ital- 
ian immorality. Vehement contention in the sphere 
of politics, restless speculation, together with the loos- 
ening of every tie that bound society together in the 



RECAPITULATION. 493 

Middle Ages, emancipated personality and substi- 
tuted the freedom of self-centered vigor and viril- 
ity (Virtu) for the prescriptions of civil or religious 
order. In the nation that had shaken off both Pa- 
pal and Imperial authority no conception of law 
remained to control caprice. Instead of law men 
obeyed the instincts of their several characters, 
swayed by artistic taste or tyrannous appetite, or 
by the splendid heroism of extinct antiquity. The 
Church had alienated the people from true piety. 
Yet no new form of religious belief arose; and 
partly through respect for the past, partly through 
the convenience of clinging to existing institu- 
tions, Catholicism was indulgently tolerated. At 
the same time the humanists introduced an ideal 
antagonistic to Christianity of the monastic type. 
Without abruptly severing themselves from the 
communion of the Church, and while in form 
at least observing all its ordinances, they thought, 
wrote, spoke, felt, and acted like Pagans. To 
the hypocrisies of obsolete asceticism were add- 
ed the affectations of anachronistic license. Mean- 
while, the national genius for art attained its full- 
est development, simultaneously with the decay 
of faith, the extinction of political liberty, and 
the anarchy of ethics. So strong was the aes- 
thetic impulse that it seemed for a while capa- 
ble of drawing all the forces of the nation to it- 
self. A society that rested upon force and fraud, 
corroded with cynicism, cankered with hypocrisy 



494 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

recognizing no standard apart from success in ac- 
tion and beauty in form, so conscious of its own 
corruption that it produced no satirist among the 
many who laughed lightly at its vices, wore the 
external aspect of exquisite refinement, and was 
delicately sensitive to every discord. Those who 
understood the contradictions of the age most 
deeply were the least capable of rising above 
them Consequently we obtain In Machiavelli's 
works the ideal picture of personal character, mov- 
ing to calculated ends by scientifically selected 
means, none of which are sanctioned by the un- 
written code of law that governs human progress. 
Cosimos positivism Is reduced to theory. Fraud 
becomes a rule of conduct. Force is advocated^ 
when the dagger or the poisoned draught or the 
extermination of a city may lead the individual 
straight forward to his object. Religion Is shown 
to be a political engine. Hypocrisy is a mask 
that must be worn. The sanctities of ancient use 
rmd custom controlling appetite have no place as- 
signed them In the system. Action Is analyzed as 
a branch of the fine arts ; and the spirit of the age, 
of which the philosopher makes himself the hlero- 
phant, compels him to portray it as a sinister and 
evil art. 

\ In the civilization of Italy, carried prematurely 
beyond the conditions of the Middle Ages, before 
the institutions of mediaeval ism had been destroyed 
or its prejudices had been overcome, we everywhere 



ITALIAN PRECOCITY. 495 

discern the want of a co-ordinating principle. The 
old religion has died; but there Is no new faith 
The Communes have been proved inadequate; but 
there is no nationality. Practical positivism has '^b 
literated the virtues of a chivalrous and feudal pa^i 
but science has not yet been born. Scholarship 
floods the world with the learning of antiquity ; but 
this knowledge is still undigested. Art triumphs, 
but the aesthetic instinct has invaded the regions 
of politics and ethics, owing to defective analysis 
in theory, and in practice to over-confident reliance 
on personal ability. The individual has attained to 
freedom; but he has not learned the necessity of 
submitting his volition to law. At all points the 
development of the Italians strikes us as precocious, 
with the weakness of precocity scarcely distinguisha- 
ble from the decay of old age. A transition from the 
point attained in the Renaissance to some firmer 
and more solid ground was imperatively demanded. 
But the fatality of events precluded the Italians from 
making it. Their evolution, checked in mid career 
by the brilliant ambition of France and the cautious 
reactionary despotism of Spain, remained suspended. 
Students are left, face to face with the sixteenth cen- 
tury, to decipher an inscription that lacks its leading 
verb, to puzzle over a riddle whereof the solution 
is hidden from us by the ruin of a people. It 
must ever be an undecided question whether the 
Italians, undisturbed by foreign interference, could 
have passed beyond the artificial and exceptional 



40 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

Stage of the Renaissance to a sounder and more 
substantial phase of national vitality; or whether, 
as their inner conscience seems to have assured 
them, their disengagement from moral obligation 
and their mental ferment foreboded an inevitable 
catastrophe. 



CHAPTER IX. 

SAVONAROLA. 



The At .itude ot Savonarola toward the Renaissance — His Parentage, 
Birth, and ChildhoG i at Ferrara — His Poem on the Ruin of the 
World — Joins the Dominicans at Bologna — Letter to his Father — 
Poem on the Ruin of the Church — Begins to preach in 1482 — First 
Visit to Florence — San Gemignano — His Prophecy — Brescia in 
i486 — Personal Appearance and Style of Oratory — Effect on his 
audience — The three Conclusions — His Visions — Savonarola's 
Shortcomings as a patriotic Statesman — His sincere Belief in his 
prophetic Calling — Friendship with Pico della Mirandola — Settles 
in Florence, 1490 — Convent of San Marco — Savonarola's Relation 
to Lorenzo de' Medici — The death of Lorenzo — Sermons of 1493 
and 1494 — the Constitution of 149S — Theocracy in Florence — 
. Piagnoni, Bigi, and Arrabbiati — War between Savonarola and 
Alexander VL — The Signory suspends him from preaching in the 
Duomo in 1498 — Attempts to call a Council — The Ordeal by Fire 
— San Marco stormed by the Mob — ^Trial and Execution of 
Savonarola. 



Nothing is more characteristic of the sharp contrasts 
of the Italian Renaissance than the emergence not 
only from the same society, but also from the bosom 
of the same Church, of two men so diverse as the 
Pope Alexander VI. and the Prophet Girolamo Sav- 
onarola. Savonarola has been claimed as a precursor 
of the Lutheran Reformers, and as an inspired expo- 
nent of the spirit of the fifteenth century. In reality 
he neither shared the revolutionary genius of Luther, 
which gave a new vitality to the faiths of Christendom, 



498 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

nor did he sympathize with that free movement of the 
modern mind which found its first expression in the 
arts and humanistic studies of Renaissance Italy. 
Both toward Renaissance and Reform he preserved 
the attitude of a monk, showing on the one hand an 
austere mistrust of pagan culture, and on the other 
no desire t?o alter either the creeds or the traditions 
of the Romish Church. Yet the history of Savo- 
narola is not to be dissociated from that of the Ital- 
ian Renaissance. He more clearly than any other 
man discerned the moral and political situation of his 
country. When all the states of Italy seemed sunk in 
peace and cradled in prosperity, he predicted war, and 
felt the imminence of overwhelming calamity. The 
purification of customs which he preached was de- 
manded by the flagrant vices of the Popes and by the 
wickedness of the tyrants. The scourge which he 
prophesied did in fact descend upon Italy. In addi- 
tion to this clairvoyance by right of which we call 
him prophet, the hold he took on Florence at a critical 
moment of Italian history is alone enough to entitle 
him to more than merely passing notice. 

Girolamo Savonarola was born at Ferrara in 1452.* 
His grandfather Michele, a Paduan of noble family, had 
removed to the capital of the Este princes at the begin- 
ning of the fifteenth century. There he held the office 

> In this chapter on Savonarola I have made use of Villari's Life 
(translated by Leonard Horner, Longmans, 1863, 2 vols.), Michelet's 
Histoire de France, vol. vii., Milman's article on Savonarola (John 
Murray, 1870), Nardi's htoria Fiorentina, book ii., and the Memoiri 
of De Comines. 



SAVONAROLA'S BOYHOOD. 499 

of court physician; and GIrolamo was intended for the 
same profession. But early in his boyhood the future 
prophet showed signs of disinclination for a worldly 
life, and an invincible dislike of the court. Under the 
F-Iouse of E'ite, Ferrara was famous throughout Italy 
for its gayety and splendor. No city enjoyed more 
brilliant an<l more frequent public shows. Nowhere 
did the aristocracy maintain so much of feudal mag- 
nificence .'ind chivalrous enjoyment. The square cas- 
tle of red brick, which still stands in the middle of the 
town, was thronged with poets, players, fools who en- 
joyed an almost European reputation, court flatterers, 
knights, pages, scholars and fair ladies. But beneath 
its cube of solid masonry, on a level with the moat, 
shut out from daylight by a sevenfold series of iron 
bars, lay dungeons in which the objects of the Duke's 
displeasure clanked chains and sighed their lives away.^ 
Within the precincts of this palace the young Savona- 
rola learned to hate alike the worldly vices and the des- 
potic cruelty against which in after-life he prophesied 
and fought unto the death. 

' Of his boyhood we know but little. His biogra- 
phers only tell us that he was grave and solitary, fre 
quenting churches, praying with passionate persistence, 
obstinately refusing, though otherwise docile, to join 
his father in his visits to the court. Aristotle and S. 
Thomas Aquinas seem to have been the favorite mas- 
ters of his study. In fact he refused the new lights of 
the humanists, and adhered to the ecclesiastical train- 

• See p. 424. 



500 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

ing of the schoolmen. Already at the age of twenty 
we find him composing a poem in Italian on the Ruin 
of the World, in which he cries: 'The whole world is 
in confusion: all virtue is extinguished, and all good 
manners; I find no living light abroad, nor one who 
blushes for his vices.' His point of departure had 
been taken, and the keynote of his life had been 
struck. The sense of intolerable sin that came upon 
him in Ferrara haunted him through manhood, set his 
hand against the Popes and despots of Italy, and gave 
peculiar tone to his prophetic utterances. 

The attractions of the cloister, as a refuge from the 
storms of the world, and as a rest from the torments 
of the sins of others, now began to sway his mind.^ 
But he communicated his desire to no one. It would 
have grieved his father and his mother to find that 
their son, who was, they hoped, to be a shining light 
at the court of Ferrara, had determined to assume 
the cowl. At length, however, came the time at which 
he felt that leave the world he must. * It was on the 
23d of April 1475,' says Villari; *he was sitting with 
his lute and playing a sad melody; his mother, as if 
moved by a spirit of divination, turned suddenly 
round to him, and exclaimed mournfully. My son, 
that is a sign we are soon to part. He roused him- 
self, and continued, but with a trembling hand, to 
touch the strings of the lute, without raising his eyes 

> Often in later life Savonarola cried that he had sought the clois- 
ter to find rest, but that God had chosen, instead of bringing him inio 
( aim w.Tters, to cast him on a tempest-swollen sea. See the Sermoa 
quoted l)y Villari, vol. i. D. 298. 



HE TAKES ORDERS. 50I 

from the ground/ This would make a picture: spring 
twilight in the quaint Italian room, with perhaps a 
branch of fig-tree or of bay across the open window; 
the mother looking up with anxious face from her 
needlework; the youth, with those terrible eyes and 
tense lips and dilated nostrils of the future prophet, 
not yet worn by years of care, but strongly marked 
and unmistakable, bending over the melancholy 
chords of the lute, dressed almost for the last time in 
secular attire. 

\ On the very next day Girolamo left Ferrara in 
secret and journeyed to Bologna. There he entered 
the order of S. Dominic, the order of the Preachers, 
the order of his master S. Thomas, the order too, 
let us remember, of inquisitorial crusades. The letter 
written to his father after taking this step is memora- 
ble. In it he says: * The motives by which I have 
been led to enter into a religious life are these : the 
great misery of the world; the iniquities of men, 
their rapes, adulteries, robberies, their pride, idolatry, 
and fearful blasphemies : so that things have come 
to such a pass that no one can be found acting right- 
eously. Many times a day have I repeated with 
tears the verse : 

Heu, fuge crudeles terras, fuge littus avarum ! 

I could not endure the enormous wickedness of the 
blinded people of Italy ; and the more so because I 
saw everywhere virtue despised and vice honored.' 
We see clearly that Savonarola's vocation took its 
origin in a deep sense of the wickedness of the worle*. 



502 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

It was the same spirit as that which drove the early 
Christians of Alexandria into the Thebaid. Austere 
and haggard, consumed with the zeal of the Lord, he 
had moved long enough among the Ferrarese holi- 
day-makers. Those elegant young men in tight hose 
and particolored jackets, with oaths upon their lips 
and deeds of violence and lust within their hearts, 
were no associates for him. It is touching, however, 
to note that no text of Ezekiel or Jeremiah, but 
Virgil's musical hexameter, sounded through his soul 
the warning to depart. 

In this year Savonarola composed another poem . 
this time on the Ruin of the Church. In his boyhood 
he had witnessed the pompous shows which greeted 
y^neas Sylvius, more like a Roman general than a 
new-made Pope, on his entrance into Ferrara. Since 
then he had seen the monster Sixtus mount the 
Papal throne. No wonder if he, who had fled from 
the world to the Church for purity and peace, should 
need to vent his passion in a song. ' Where,' he 
cries, ' are the doctors of old times, the saints, the 
learning, charity, chastity of the past ? ' The Church 
answers by displaying her rent raiment and wounded 
body, and by pointing to the cavern in which she 
has to make her home. ' Who,' exclaims the poet, 
' has wrought this wrong ? ' Una fallace, stiperba 
me7'etrice — Rome! Then indeed the passion of the 
novice breaks in fire : — 

Deh! per Dio, donna, 
Se romper si potria c^'elle i^randi alel 



AT FLORENCE, 503 

The Church replies : — 

lu piangi e taci: e questo meglio panni. 

No Other answer could be given to Savonarola's 
impatient yearnings even by his own hot heart, while 
he yet remained a young and unknown monk in 
Bologna. Nor, strive as he might strive through all 
his life, was it granted to him to break those out- 
spread wings of arrogant Rome. 

\ The career of Savonarola as a preacher began in 
1482, when he was sent first to Ferrara and then 
to Florence on missions by his superiors. But at 
neither place did he find acceptance. A prophet 
has no honor in his own country; and for pagan- 
hearted Florence, though destined to be the theater 
of his life-drama, Savonarola had as yet no thundrous 
burden of invective to utter. Besides, his voice was 
sharp and thin ; his face and person were not pre- 
possessing. The style of his discourse was adapted 
to cloisteral disputations, and overloaded with scholastic 
distinctions. The great orator had not yet arisen in 
him. The friar, with all his dryness and severity, 
was but too apparent. With what strange feelings 
must the youth have trodden the streets of Florence ' 
In after-days he used to say that he foreknew those 
streets and squares were destined to be the scene 
of his labors. But then, voiceless, powerless, without 
control of his own genius, without the consciousness 
of his prophetic mission, he brooded alone and out 
of harmony with the beautiful and mundane city 



504 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

The charm of -the hills and gardens of Valdamo, 
the loveliness of Giotto's tower, the amplitude of 
Brunelleschi's dome — these may have sunk deep 
into his soul. And the subtle temper of the Flor- 
entine intellect must have attracted his own keen 
spirit by a secret sympathy. For Florence erelong 
became the city of his love, the first-born of his 
yearnings. 

In the cloisters of San Marco, enriched with 
splendid libraries by the liberality of the Medicean 
princes, he was at peace. The walls of that convent 
had recently been decorated with frescoes by Fra 
Angelico, even as a man might crowd the leaves of a 
missal v/Ith illuminations. Among these Savonarola 
meditated and was happy. But in the pulpit and in 
contact with the holida)^ folk of Florence he was 
ill at ease. Lorenzo de* Medici overshadowed the 
whole city. Lorenzo, in whom the pagan spirit of 
the Renaissance, the spirit of free culture, found a 
proper incarnation, was the very opposite of Savo- 
narola, who had already judged the classical revival 
by its fruits, and had conceived a spiritual resur- 
rection for his country. At Florence a passionate 
love of art and learning — the enthusiasm which 
prompted men to spend their fortunes upon MSS. 
and statues, the sensibility to beauty which produced 
the masterworks of Donatello and Ghiberti, the thirst 
tor knowledge which burned in Pico and Poliziano 
and Ficino — existed side by side with impudent im- 
morality, religious deadness. cold contempt for truth. 



SAVONAROLA AND LORENZO. 505 

and cynical admiration of successful villainy. Both 
the good and the evil which flourished on this fertile 
soil so luxuriantly were combined in the versatile 
genius of the merchant prince, whose policy it was 
to stifle freedom by caressing the follies, vices, and 
intellectual tastes of his people. 

The young Savonarola was as yet no match for 
Lorenzo. And whither could he look for help? The 
reform of morals he so ardently desired was not to be 
expected from the Church. Florence well knew that 
Sixtus had plotted to murder the Medici before the 
altar at the moment of the elevation of the Host. 
Excommunicated for a deed of justice after the fail- 
ure of this Popish plot, the city had long been at 
war with the pontiff. If anywhere it was in the 
cells of the philosophers, in that retreat where Fici- 
no burned his lamp to Plato, in that hall where the 
Academy crowned their masters bust with laurels, 
that the more sober-minded citizens found ghostly 
comfort and advice. But from this philosophy the 
fervent soul of Savonarola turned with no less loath- 
ing, and with more contempt, tha*^ from the Canti Car- 
nascialeschi and Aristophanic pageants of Lorenzo, 
which made Florence at Carnival time affect the 
fashions of Athens during the Dionysia. It is true 
that Italy owed much to the elevated theism devel- 
oped by Platonic students. While the humanists 
were exalting pagan license, and while the Church 
was teaching the worst kinds of immorality, the phi- 
losophers kept alive in cultivated minds a sense of God. 



5o6 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

But the monk, nourished on the Bible and S. 
Thomas, valued this confusion of spirits and creeds 
in a chaos of indiscriminate erudition, at a small price. 
He had the courage in the fifteenth century at Flor- 
ence to proclaim that the philosophers were in hell, 
and that an old woman knew more of saving faith 
than Plato. Savonarola and Lorenzo were opposed 
as champions of two hostile principles alike emergent 
from the very life of the Renaissance: paganism re- 
born in the one, the spirit of the gospel in the other. 
Both were essentially modern; for it was the function 
of the Renaissance to restore to the soul of man its 
double heritage of the classic past and Christian lib- 
erty, freeing it from the fetters which the Middle 
Ages had forged. Not yet, however, were Lorenzo 
and Savonarola destined to clash. The obscure friar 
at this time was preaching to an audience of some 
thirty persons in San Lorenzo, while Poliziano and 
all the fashion of the town crowded to the sermons 
of Fra Mariano da Genezzano in Santo Spirito. This 
man flattered the taste of the moment by composing- 
orations on the model of Ficino's addresses to the 
Academy, and by complimenting Christianity upon 
its similarity to Platonism. Who could then have 
guessed that beneath the cowl of the harsh-voiced 
Dominican, his rival, burned thoughts that in a fe\\ 
years would inflame Florence with a conflagration 
powerful enough to destroy the fabric of the Medi 
cean despotism ? 

From Florence, where he had met with no sue 



AT SAN GEMIGNANO, 507 

cess, Savonarola was sent to San Gemignano, a little 
town on the top of a high hill between Florence and 
Siena. We now visit San Gemignano in order to 
study some fading frescoes of Gozzoli and Ghirlan- 
dajo, or else for the sake of its strange feudal tow- 
ers, tall pillars of brown stone, crowded together 
within the narrow circle of the town walls. Very 
beautiful is the prospect from these ramparts on a 
spring morning, w^hen the song of nightingales and 
the scent of acacia flowers ascend together from the 
groves upon the slopes beneath. The gray Tuscan 
landscape for scores and scores of miles all round 
melts into blueness, like the blueness of the sky, 
flecked here and there with wandering cloud-shad- 
ows. Let those who pace the grass-grown streets 
of the hushed city remember that here the first 
flash of authentic genius kindled in Savonarola's 
soul. Here for the first time he prophesied : * The 
church, will be scourged, then regenerated, and this 
quickly.* These are the celebrated three conclusions, 
the three points to which Savonarola in all his pro- 
phetic utterances adhered. 

But not yet had he fully entered on his vocation. 
His voice w^as weak ; his style uncertain ; his soul, w^e 
may believe, still wavering between strange dread and 
awful joy, as he beheld, through many a backward 
rolling mist of doubt, the mantle of the prophets de- 
scend upon him. Already he had abandoned the 
schoolmen for the Bible. Already he had learned by 
heart each verse of the Old and New Testaments. 



5o8 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

Pondering on their texts, he had discovered four sep- 
arate interpretations for every suggestion of Sacred 
Writ. For some of the pregnant utterances of th-o 
prophets he found hundreds, pouring forth metaphor 
and illustration in wild and dazzling profusion of auda- 
cious, uncouth imagery. The flame which began to 
smoulder in him at San Gemignano burst forth into a 
blaze at Brescia, in i486. Savonarola was now aged 
thirty-four. * Midway upon the path of life ' he opened 
the Book of Revelation : he figured to the people of 
Brescia the four-and-twenty elders rising to denounce 
the sins of Italy, and to declare the calamities that 
must ensue. He pictured to them their city flowing 
with blood. His voice, which now became the inter- 
preter of his soul, in its resonance and earnestness 
and piercing shrillness, thrilled his hearers with strange 
terror. Already they believed his prophecy; and 
twenty -six years later, when the soldiers of Gaston 
de Foix slaughtered six thousand souls in the streets 
of Brescia, her citizens recalled the Apocalyptic warn- 
ings of the Dominican monk. 

As Savonarola is now launched upon his vocation 
of prophecy, this Is the right moment to describe his 
personal appearance and his style of preaching. We 
have abundant material for judging what his features 
were, and how they flashed beneath the storm of in- 
spiration.i Fra Bartolommeo, one of his followers, 



> Engravings of the several portraits may be seen in Harford's 

Life of Michael Angelo Bunnarrofi ('T.onormans, 1857 >rol. i.). and 
also in Villari. 



PERSONAL APPEARANCE. 509 

painted a profile of him in the character of S. Peter 
Martyr. This shows all the benignity and grace of 
expression which his stern lineaments could assume. 
It is a picture of the sweet and gentle nature latent 
within the fiery arraigner of his nation at the bar of 
God. In contemporary medals the face appears hard, 
keen, uncompromising, beneath its heavy cowl. But 
the noblest portrait is an intaglio engraved by Gio- 
vanni della Corniole, now to be seen in the Uffizzi 
at Florence. Of this work Michael Angelo, himself 
a disciple of Savonarola, said that art could go no 
further. We are therefore justified in assuming that 
the engraver has not only represented faithfully the 
outline of Savonarola's face, but has also indicated his 
peculiar expression. A thick hood covers the whole 
head and shoulders. Beneath it can be traced the 
curve of a long and somewhat flat skull, rounded into 
extraordinary fullness at the base and side. From a 
deeply sunken eye-socket emerges, scarcely seen, but 
powerfully felt, the eye that blazed with lightning. 
The nose is strong, prominent, and aquiline, with wide 
nostrils, capable of terrible dilation under the stress of 
vehement emotion. The mouth has full, compressed 
projecting lips. It is large, as if made for a torrent 
of eloquence : it is supplied with massive muscles, as 
if to move with energy and calculated force and ut- 
terance. The jawbone is hard and heavy; the cheek- 
bone emergent: between the two the flesh is hol- 
lowed, not so much with the emaciation of monastic 
vigils as with the athletic exercise of wrestlings in the 



5IO RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

throes of prophecy. The face, on the whole, is ugly, 
but not repellent; and, in spite of its great strength, it 
shows signs of feminine sensibility. Like the faces of 
Cicero and Demosthenes, it seems the fit machine for 
oratory. But the furnaces hidden away behind that 
skull, beneath that cowl, have made it haggard with 
a fire not to be found in the serener features of the 
classic orators. Savonarola was a visionary and a 
monk. The discipline of the cloister left its trace 
upon him. The wings of dreams have winnowed 
and withered that cheek as they passed over it. The 
spirit of prayer quivers upon those eager lips. The 
color of Savonarola's flesh was brown: his nerves 
were exquisitely sensitive yet strong; like a net- 
work of wrought steel, elastic, easily overstrained, 
they recovered their tone and temper less by repose 
than by the evolution of fresh electricity. With Sa- 
vonarola fasts were succeeded by trances, and trances 
by tempests of vehement improvization. From the 
midst of such profound debility that he could scarcely 
crawl up the pulpit steps, he would pass suddenly into 
the plenitude of power, filling the Dome of Florence 
with denunciations, sustaining his discourse by no 
mere trick of rhetoric that flows to waste upon the 
lips of shallow preachers, but marshaling the phalanx 
of embattled arguments and pointed illustrations, pour- 
ing his thought forth in columns of continuous flame, 
mingling figures of sublimest imagery with reasonings 
of severest accuracy, at one time melting his audience 
to tears, at another freezing them with terror, again 



STYLE OF PREACHING. cil 

quickening their souls with prayers and pleadings and 
blessings that had in them the sweetness of the very 
spirit of Christ. His sermons began with scholastic 
exposition ; as they advanced, the ecstasy of inspira- 
tion fell upon the preacher, till the sympathies of the 
whole people of Florence gathered round him,^ met 
and attained, as it were, to single consciousness in 
him. He then no longer restrained the impulse of 
his oratory, but became the mouthpiece of God, the 
interpreter to themselves of all that host. In a fiery 
crescendo, never flagging, never losing firmness of 
grasp or lucidity of vision, he ascended the altar steps 
of prophecy, and, standing like Moses on the mount 
between the thunders of God and the tabernacles of 
the plain, fulminated period after period of impas- 
sioned eloquence. The walls of the church re-echoed 
with sobs and wailings dominated by one ringing 
voice. The scribe to whom we owe the fragments 
of these sermons, at times breaks off with these words: 
'Here I was so overcome with weeping that I could 
not go on.' Pico della Mirandola tells us that the 
mere sound of Savonarola's voice, startling the still- 
ness of the Duomo, thronged through all its space 
with people, was like a clap of doom : a cold shiver 

> Nardi, in his Istorie di Firenze (lib. ii. cap. i6), describes the 

crowd assembled in the Duomo to hear Savonarola preach: 'Per la 
moltitudine degli uditori non essendo quasi bastante la chiesa catte- 
drale di saiita Maria del Fiore, ancora che molto grande e capace 
sia, fu necessario edificar dentro lungo i pareti di quella, dirempetto 
al pergamo, certi gradi di legname rilevati con ordine di sederi, a 
guisa di teatro, e cosi dalla parte di sopra all' entrata del coro e dalla 
parte di sotto in verso le porte della detta chiesa.' 



5ia RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

ran through the* marrow of his bones, the hairs of his 
head stood on end, as he listened. Another witness 
reports : ' These sermons caused such terror, alarm, 
sobbing, and tears that every one passed through the 
streets without speaking, more dead than alive.' 

Such was the preacher: and such was the effect 
of his oratory. The theme on which he loved to 
dwell was this. Repent! A judgment of God is 
at hand. A sword is suspended over you. Italy 
is doomed for her iniquity — for the sins of the 
Church, whose adulteries have filled the world — 
for the sins of the tyrants, who encourage crime 
and trample upon souls — for the sins of you people, 
you fathers and mothers, you young men, you maid- 
ens, you children that lisp blasphemy ! Nor did Sa* 
vonarola deal in generalities. He described in plain 
language every vice; he laid bare every abuse; sc 
that a mirror was held up to the souls of his hearers, 
in which they saw their most secret faults appallingly 
portrayed and ringed around with fire. He entered 
with particularity into the details of the coming woes. 
One by one he enumerated the bloodshed, the ruin 
of cities, the trampling down of provinces, the pas- 
sage of armies, the desolating wars that were about 
to fall on Italy.^ You may read pages of his ser- 

» Savonarola's whole view of the situation and of the perils of Italy 
was that of a prophet. He saw more clearly than other people what 
was inevitable. But his disciples and the vulgar believed implicitly 
in his prophetic gift in the narrower sense, that is, in his power to 
predict events, such as the deaths of Lorenzo and the King of Naples, 
the punishment of Charles VIII. in the loss of the dauphin, etc. Pico 
says: 'Savonarola could read the fiilure as clearly as one sees the 



HIS PROPHECY. 513 

mons which seem like vivid narratives of what 
afterwards took place in the sack of Prato, in the 
storming of Brescia, in the battle of the Ronco, 
in the cavern-massacre of Vicenza. No wonder 
that he stirred his audience to their center. The 
hell within them was revealed. The coming doom 
above them was made manifest. Ezekiel and Jere- 
miah were not more prophetic. John crying to a 
generation of vipers, ' Repent ye, for the kingdom 
of heaven is at hand ! ' was not more weighty with 
tht mission of authentic inspiration. 

' I began ' — Savonarola writes himself with refer- 
ence to a course of sermons delivered in 1491 — *I 
began publicly to expound the Revelation in our 
Church of S. Mark. During the course of the year 
I continued to develop to the Florentines these three 
propositions : That the Church would be renewed 
in our time; that before that renovation God would 
strike all Italy with a fearful chastisement; that these 
things would happen shortly.' It is by right of the 
foresight of a new age contained in these three fa- 
mous so-called conclusions that Savonarola deserves 
to be named the Prophet of the Renaissance. He 
was no apostle of reform : it did not occur to him 
to reconstruct the creed, to dispute the discipline, 

whole is greater than the part.' And there is no doubt that, as time 
went on, Savonarola came to believe himself that he possessed this 
faculty. After his trial and execution a very uncomfortable sense of 
doubt remained upon the minds of those who had been witnesses 
of his life-drania. Upon this topic Guicciardini, Sior. Fior., Op, 
Ined. vol. iii. p. 179; Nardi, Stor. Fior. lib. ii. caps. 16 and 36, ma} 
be read with advantasre. 



514 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

or to criticise 'the authority of the Church. He 
was no founder of a new order: unlike his pre- 
decessors, Dominic and Francis, he never attempted 
to organize a society of saints or preachers; unlike 
liis successors, Caraffa the Theatine and Loyola the 
Jesuit, he enrolled no militia for the defense of the 
faith, constructed no machinery for education. Start- 
ing with simple horror at the wickedness of the world, 
he had recourse to the old prophets. He steeped 
himself in Bible studies. He caught the language 
of Malachi and Jeremiah. He became convinced 
that for the wickedness of Italy a judgment was 
imminent. From that conclusion he rose upon the 
wings of faith to the belief that a new age would 
dawn. The originality of his intuition consisted in 
this, that while Italy was asleep, and no man trem- 
bled for the future, he alone fek that the stillness 
of the air was fraught with thunder, that its tran- 
quillity was like that which precedes a tempest blown 
from the very nostrils of the God of Hosts. 

\ To the astonishment of his hearers, and perhaps 
also of himself his prophecies began to fulfill them- 
selves. Within three years after his first sermon in 
S. Mark's, Charles VIII. had entered Italy, Lorenzo 
de' Medici was dead, and politicians no less than 
mystics felt that a new chapter had been opened 
in the book of the world's history. The Reform 
of the Church was also destined to follow. What 
Savonarola had foreseen, here too happened; but 
not in the way he would have wished, nor by the 



FULFILLMEN2' OF PROPHECIES, 515 

means lie would have used. It is otie thing to be 
a prophet in the sense of discerning the catastrophe 
to which circumstances must inevitably lead, another 
thing to trace beforehand the path which will be 
Laken by the hurricanes that change the face of 
the world. Remaining in his soul a monk, attached 
by education and by natural sympathy to the past 
rather than the future, he felt in spite of himself 
the spirit of the coming age. Had he lived but 
one century earlier, we should not have called him 
prophet. It was the Renaissance which set the seal 
of truth upon his utterances. Yet in his vision of 
the world to be, he was like Balaam prophesying 
blindly of a star. 

Sixtus IV. had died and been succeeded by In- 
nocent VIII. Innocent had given place to Alex- 
ander. The very nadir of the abyss had been 
reached. Then Savonarola saw a vision and heard 
a voice; Ecce gladius Domini super terrain cito et 
velociter. The sword turned earthward; the air was 
darkened with fiery sleet and arrows; thunders rolled; 
the world was filled with pestilences, wars, famines. 
At another time he dreamed and looked toward 
Rome. From the Eternal City there rose a black 
cross, reaching to heaven, and on it was inscribed 
Cricx irce Dei, Then too the skies were troubled; 
clouds rushed through the air discharging darts and 
fire and swords, and multitudes below were dying. 
These visions he published in sermons and in print 
Pictures were made from them. They and the 



5l6 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

three conclusions went abroad through Italy. Again, 
Charles was preparing for his expedition. Savona- 
rola took the Ark of Noah for his theme. The 
deluge was at hand; he bade his hearers enter the 
ship of refuge before the terrible and mighty nation 
came: 'O Italy! O Rome! I give you over to the 
hands of a people who will wipe you out from among 
the nations ! I see them descending like lions. Pes- 
tilence comes marching hand in hand with war. The 
deaths will be so many that the buriers shall go 
through the streets crying out: Who hath dead, who 
hath dead ? and one will bring his father, and another 
his son. O Rome ! I cry again to you to repent . 
Repent, Venice ! Milan, repent ! ' * The prophets a 
hundred years ago proclaimed to you the flagella- 
tion of the Church. For five years I have been 
announcing it: and now again I cry to you. The 
Lord is full of wrath. The angels on their knees 
cry to Him: Strike, strike! The good sob and 
groan : We can no more. The orphans, the wid- 
ows say: We are devoured, we cannot go on living 
All the Church triumphant hath cried to Christ: Thou 
diedst in vain. It is heaven which is in combat. 
The saints of Italy, the angels, are leagued with 
the barbarians. Those who called them in have 
put the saddles to the horses. Italy is in confu- 
sion, saith the Lord; this time she shall be yours. 
And the Lord cometh above his saints, above the 
blessed ones who march in battle-array, who are 
drawn up in squadrons. Whither are they bound? 



THE SCOURGE. 517 

S. Peter is for Rome, crying: To Rome, to Rome! 
and S. Paul and S. Gregory march, crying: To 
Rome ! And behind them go the sword, the pes- 
tilence, the famine. S. John cries: Up, up, to Flor- 
ence! And the plague follows him. S. Anthony 
cries: Ho for Lombardy! S. Mark cries: Haste 
we to the city that is throned upon the waters! 
And all the angels of heaven, sword in hand, and 
all the celestial consistory, march on unto this war/ 
Then he speaks of his own fate: * What shall be 
the end of our war, you ask ? If this be a general 
question, I shall answer Victory! If you ask it of 
myself in particular, I answer. Death, or to be hewn 
in pieces. This is our faith, this is our guerdon, this 
is our reward ! We ask for no more than this. But 
when you see me dead, be not then troubled. AK 
those who have prophesied have suffered and been 
slain. To make my word prevail, there is needed 
the blood of many.* 

V These are the prophecies with which Savonarola 
anticipated the coming of a foreign conqueror. It 
is interesting to trace in his apostrophes the double 
feeling of the prophet. Desire for the advent of 
Charles as a Messiah, liberator, and purifier of the 
Church, contends with an instinctive horror of the 
barbarian. Savonarola, like Dante, like all Italian 
patriots, except only Machiavelli, who too late had 
been lessoned by bitter experience to put no trust 
in foreign princes, could not refrain from hoping even 
against hope ::hat good might come from beyond the 



51 8 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

Alps. Yet when the foreigners appeared, he trem- 
bled at the violence they wrought upon the ancient 
liberties of Italy. Savonarola's chief shortcoming as 
a patriot consisted in this, that he strengthened the 
old folly of the Florentines in leaning upon strangers J 
Had he taught the Italians to work out their self- 
regeneration from within, instead of preparing them 
to accept an alien's yoke, he would have won a far 
more lasting meed of fame. As it was, together with 
the passion for liberty which became a religion with 
his followers, he strove to revive the obsolete tactics 
of an earlier age, and bequeathed to Florence the 
weak policy of waiting upon France. This legacy 
bore bitter fruits in the next century. If it was the 
memory of the Friar which nerved the citizens of 
Florence to sustain the siege of 1628, the same 
memory bound them to seek aid from inconsequent 
Francis, and to hope that at the last moment a co- 
hort of seraphim would defend their walls.^ 

That Savonarola believed in his own prophecies 
there is no doubt. They were in fact, as I have 
already tried to show, a view of the political and 
moral situation of Italy, expressed with the force of 
profound religious conviction and based upon a 
theory of the divine government of the world. But 
how far he allowed himself to be gi ided by visions 
and by words uttered to his soul in trance, is a some- 

• Segni, 1st. Fior. lib. i. p. 23, records a sayin^T of Savonarola's, 
Gigli con gigli do7/er fiorire, as one of the causer, of the obstinate 
French partiaHty of the Florentines in 1529. 

• See Varchi, Segni, and Nardi, who agree on tiese points. 



HIS VISIONS, 519 

what different question. It is just at this point that 
a man possessed of acute insight and trusting to the 
truth of his instincts may be tempted under strong 
devotional excitement to pass the border land which 
separates healthy intuition from hallucination. If 
Savonarola's studies of the Hebrew prophets in- 
clined him to believe in dreams and revelations, 
yet on the other hand the strong logic of his in- 
tellect, trained in scholastic distinctions, taught him 
to mistrust the promptings of a power that spoke 
to him when he was somewhat more or less than 
his prosaic self. How could he be sure that the 
spirit came from God? We know for certain that 
he struggled against the impulse of divination and 
refused at times to obey it. But it overcame him. 
Like the Cassandra of ^schylus, he panted in the 
grasp of one mightier than himself. 'An inward 
fire,* he cried, * consumes my bones and forces me to 
speak out.' And again : * I have, O Lord, burnt my 
wings of contemplation, and I have launched into a 
tempestuous sea, where I have found contrary winds 
in every quarter. I wished to reach a harbor, but 
could not find the way thither ; I wished to lay me 
down, but could meet with no resting-place. I longed 
to be silent and to utter not a word. But the word of 
the Lord is in my heart; and if it does not come 
forth, it must consume the marrow of my bones. 
Thus, O Lord, if it be Thy will that I should navi- 
gate in deep waters, Thy will be done.' 

At another time he says: 'I remember well that 



5ao RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

upon one occasion, in the year 1491, when I was 
preaching In the Duomo, having composed my ser- 
mon entirely upon these visions, I determined to 
abstain from all allusion to them, and In future to ad- 
here to this resolution. God is my witness that 
the whole of Saturday and the whole of the succeed 
ing night I lay awake, and could see no other course, 
no other doctrine. At daybreak, worn out and de- 
pressed by the many hours I had lain awake, while 
I was praying I heard a voice that said to me : " Fool 
that thou art, dost thou not see that it Is God's will 
that thou shouldst keep to the same path ? " The 
consequence of which was that on the same day I 
preached a tremendous sermon.* 

These passages leave upon the mind no doubt 
of Savonarola's sincerity. If he deceived others, 
he was himself the first to be deceived, and that 
too not before he had subjected himself to the most 
searching examination, seeking in vain to escape 
from the force which compelled him to play the 
part of prophet. Terrible, indeed, must have been 
the wrestlings and questionings of this strong-fibered 
Intellect, alone and diffident, within the toils of ecstasy. 
'■ Returning to the details of Savonarola's biogra- 
phy, we find him still in Lombardy in i486. After 
leaving Brescia he moved to Regglo, where he made 
^e friendship of the famous Giovanni Pico della 
MIrandola. They continued Intimate till the death 
of the latter In 1494; it was his nephew, Giovanni 
Francesco Pico della Mirandola, who afterwards wrote 



RESIDENCE AT FLORENCE. 52 1 

the Life of Savonarola. From Reggio the friar 
went to Genoa; and by this time his fame as a 
prophet in the north of Lombardy was well estab- 
lished. Now came the turning-point in his life. 
Fourteen hundred and ninety is the date which de- 
termined his public action as a man of power in Italy. 
Lorenzo de' Medici, strangely enough, was the in- 
strument of his recall in this year to Florence. Lo- 
renzo, who, if he could have foreseen the future of 
his own family in Florence, would rather have stifled 
this monk's voice in his cowl, took pains to send for 
him and bring him to S. Mark's, the convent upon 
which his father had lavished so much wealth. He 
hoped to add luster to his capital by the preaching 
of the most eloquent friar in Italy. Clear-sighted 
as he was, he could not discern the flame of liberty 
which burned in Savonarola's soul. Savonarola, the 
democratic party leader, was a force in politics as 
incalculable beforehand as Ferrucci the hero. On 
August I, 1490, the monk ascended the pulpit of 
S. Mark's, and delivered a tremendous sermon on a 
passage from the Apocalypse. On the eve of this 
commencement he is reported to have said : * To- 
morrow I shall begin to preach, and I shall preach 
for eight years.' The Florentines were greatly 
moved. Savonarola had to remove from the Church 
of S. Mark to the Duomo; and thus began the 
spiritual dictatorship which he exercised thenceforth 
without intermission till his death. 
\ Lorenzo soon began to resent the influence of this 



522 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

uncompromising monk, who, not content with moral 
exhortations, confidently predicted the coming of a 
foreign conqueror, the fall of the Magnificent, the 
peril of the Pope, and the ruin of the King of Na- 
ples. Yet it was no longer easy to suppress the 
preacher. Very early in his Florentine career Savo- 
narola had proved himself to be fully as great an ad- 
ministrator as an orator. The Convent of San Marco 
dominated by his personal authority, had made him 
Prior in 1491, and he was already engaged in a thor- 
ough reform of all the Dominican monasteries of Tus- 
cany. It was usual for the Priors elect of S. Mark to 
pay a complimentary visit to the Medici, their patrons. 
Savonarola, thinking this a worldly and unseemly cus- 
tom, omitted to observe it. Lorenzo, noticing the dis- 
courtesy, is reported to have said, with a smile: * See 
now ! here is a stranger who has come into my house, 
and will not deign to visit me.* He forgot that Savo- 
narola looked upon his convent as a house of God. 
At the same time the prince made overtures of good- 
will to the Prior, frequently attended his services, and 
dropped gold into the alms-box of S. Mark's. Savo- 
narola took no notice of him, and handed his florins 
over to the poor of the city. Then Lorenzo stirred 
up Fra Mariano da Genezzano, Savonarola's old rival, 
against him; but the clever rhetorician was no longer a 
match for the full-grown athlete of inspired eloquence. 
Da Genezzano was forced to leave Florence in angry 
discomfiture. With such unbending haughtiness did 
Savonarola already dare to brave the powers that be 



LORENZO'S DEATH. 523 

He had recognized the oppressor of liberty, the cor- 
rupter of morah'ty, the opponent of true religion, in 
Lorenzo. He hated him as a tyrant. He would not 
give him the right hand of friendship or the salute of 
civility. In the same spirit he afterwards denounced 
Alexander, scorned his excommunication, and plotted 
with the kings of Christendom for the convening of a 
Council. Lorenzo, however, was a man of supreme 
insight into character, and knew how to value his an- 
tagonist. Therefore, when the hour for dying came, 
and when, true child of the Renaissance that he was, 
he felt the need of sacraments and absolution, he sent 
for Savonarola, saying that he was the only honest 
friar he knew. The magnanimity of the Medici was 
only equaled by the firmness of the monk. Standing 
by the bedside of the dying man, who had confessed 
his sins, Savonarola said: 'Three things are required 
of you: to have a full and lively faith in God's mercy; 
to restore what you have unjustly gained; to give back 
liberty to Florence.' Lorenzo assented readily to the 
two first requisitions. At the third he turned his 
face in silence to the wall. He must indeed have {v\\ 
that to demand and promise this was easier than to 
carry it into effect. Savonarola left him without ab- 
solution. Lorenzo died.^ 

» It is just to observe that great doubt has been thrown on the 
facts above related concerning Lorenzo's death. Poliziano, who was 
with Lorenzo during his last illness, does not mention them in his 
letter to Jacobus Antiquarius (xv. Kal. Jun. 1492). But Burlmacchi, 
Pico, Barsanti, Razzi, and others of the Prate's party, agree in the 
stor)'. What Poliziano wrote was that Savonarola confessed Loren/o 
and rehired without volunteering the blessing. Razzi says the inter- 



524 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

The third point insisted upon by the friar, Restore 
liberty to Florence, not only broke the peace of the 
dying prince, but it also afterwards for ever ruled the 
conduct of Savonarola. From this time his life is 
that of a statesman no less than of a preacher. What 
Lorenzo refused, or was indeed upon his deathbed 
quite unable to perform, the monk determined to 
achieve. Henceforth he became the champion of 
popular liberty in the pulpit. Feeling that in the peo- 
ple alone lay any hope of regeneration for Italy, he 
made it the work of his whole life to give the strength 
and sanction of religion to republican freedom. This 
work he sealed with martyrdom. The spirit of the 
creed which he bequeathed to his partisans in Florence 
was political no less than pious. Whether Savona- 
rola was right to embark upon the perilous sea of 
statecraft cannot now be questioned. What prophet 
of Israel from Samuel to Isaiah was not the maker 
and destroyer of kings and constitutions ? When we 
call him by their title, we mean to say that he, like 
them, controlled by spiritual force the fortunes of his 



view between Savonarola and Lorenzo took place without witnesses; 
Pico and Burlamacchi relate the event as they heard of it from the 
lips of Savonarola. We have therefore to judge between the testi- 
mony of Poliziano, who held no communication with the friar, and 
the veracity of several narrators, biassed indeed by hostility toward 
the Medici, but in direct intercourse with the only man who could 
tell the exact truth of what passed — the confessor, Savonarola, whc 
had been alone with Lorenzo. Villari, after sifting the evidence, ar- 
rives at the conclusion that we may believe Burlamacchi. The Baron 
Reumont, in his recent Life of Lorenzo, vol. ii. p. 590, gives some 
solid reasons for accepting this conclusion with caution, and Gino 
Cappori Mpr .--..; . hstinct disbelief in Bnrlnmscchi's narration. 



HIS DICTATORSHIP. 525 

people. Whether he sought it or not, this role of 
politician was thrust upon him by the course of events: 
nor was the history of Italian cities deficient in prece- 
dents of similar functions assumed by preaching friars.^ 
To Lorenzo succeeded the incompetent Piero de' 
Medici, who surrendered the fortresses of Tuscany to 
the French army. While Savonarola was prophesy- 
ing a sword, a scourge, a deluge, Charles VIII. rode 
at the head of his knighthood into Florence. The city 
was leaderless, unused to liberty. Who but the monk 
who had predicted the invasion should now attempt to 
control it? Who but he whose voice alone had power 
to assemble and to sway the Florentines should now 
direct them? His administrative faculty in a narrow 
sphere had been proved by his reform of the Domini- 
can Convents. His divine mission was authenticated 
by the arrival of the French. The Lord had raised 
him up to act as well as to utter. He felt this: the 
people ^ felt it. He was not the man to refuse re- 
sponsibility. 

\ During the years of 1493 and 1494, when Flor- 
ence together with Italy was in imminent peril, the 
voice of Savonarola never ceased to ring. His ser- 
mons on the psalm * Quam bonus ' and on the Ark 
of Noah are among the most stupendous triumphs 
of his eloquence. From his pulpit beneath the som- 
ber dome of Brunelleschi he kept pouring forth words 
of power to resuscitate the free spirit of his Floren- 

> It is enough to allude to Arnold of Brescia in Rome, to Fra Bus- 
soiari in Pavia, and to John of Vicenza. See Appendix iv 



526 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

tines. In 1495, when the Medici had been expelled 
and the French army had gone upon its way to Na- 
ples, Savonarola was called upon to reconstitute the 
state. He bade the people abandon their old system 
of Parlamenti and Balia, and establish a Grand Coun- 
cil after the Venetian type.^ This institution, which 
seemed to the Florentines the best they had ever 
adopted, might be regarded by the historian as only 
one among their many experiments in constitution- 
making, if Savonarola had not stamped it with his 
peculiar genius by announcing that Christ was to 
be considered the Head of the State.^ This step at 

' This change was certainly wrought out by the influence of the 
friar and approved by him. Segni, lib. i. p. 15, speaks clearly on the 
point, and says that the friar for this service to the city ' debbe esser 
messo tra buoni datori di leggi, e debbe essere amato e onorato da' 
Fiorentini non altrimenti che Numa dai Romani e Solone dagli 
Ateniesi e Licurgo da' Lacedemoni.' The evil of the old system was 
that the Parlamento, which consisted of the citizens assembled in the 
Piazza, was exposed to intimidation, and had no proper initiative, 
while the Balia, or select body, to whom they then intrusted pleni- 
potentiary authority, was always the faction for the moment upper- 
most. For the mode of working the Parlamento and Balia, see Segni, 
p. 199; Nardi, lib. vi. cap. 4; Varchi, vol. ii. p. 372. Savonarola in- 
»cribed this octave stanza on the wall of the Consiglio Grande: 

• Se questo popolar consiglio e certo 
Govemo, popol, de la tua cittate 
Conservi, che da Dio t' ^ stato oiferto, 
1 In pace starai sempre e libertate: 

Tien dunque 1' occhio della mente aperto, 
Ch^ molte insidie ognor ti fien parate; 
E sappi che chi vuol far parlamento 
Vuol torti dalle mani il reggimento.' 

• See Varchi, vol. i. p. 169. Niccolo Capponi, in 1527, returning 
to the policy of Savonarola, caused the Florentines to elect Christ for 
their king, and inscribed upon the door of the Palazzo Pubblico: — 

Y. H. S. CHRISTUS REX FLORENTINI 
POPULI S. P. D£CRETO £L£CTUS. 



REFORM OF MORALS. %^^ 

once gave a theocratic bias to the government, which 
determined all the acts of the monk's administration. 
Not content with political organization, too impatient 
to await the growth of good manners from sound in- 
stitutions, he set about a moral and religious refor- 
mation. Pomps, vanities, and vices were to be aban- 
doned. Immediately the women and the young men 
threw aside their silks and fine attire. The Carnival 
songs ceased. Hymns and processions took the place 
of obscene choruses and pagan triumphs. The laws 
were remodeled in the same severe and abrupt spirit. 
Usury was abolished. Whatever Savonarola or- 
dained, Florence executed. By the magic of his 
influence the city for a moment assumed a new 
aspect. It seemed as though the old austerity 
which Dante and Villani praised were about to re- 
turn without the factious hate and pride that ruined 
mediaeval Tuscany. In everything done by Savona- 
rola at this epoch there was a strange combination 
of political sagacity with monastic zeal. Neither 
Guicciardini nor Machlavelli, writing years after- 
wards, when Savonarola had fallen and Florence 
was again enslaved, could propose anything wiser 
than his Consiglio Grande. Yet the fierce revival- 
ism advocated by the friar — the bonfire of Lorenzo 
di Credi's and Fra Bartolommeo's pictures, of MSS. 
of Boccaccio and classic poets, and of all those fin- 
eries which a Venetian Jew is said to have valued 
m one heap at 22,000 florins — the recitation of such 
Pr ' /'•:vi songs as this — 



$28 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

Never was there so sweet a gladness, 
Joy of so pure and strong a fashion, 
As with zeal and love and passion 
Thus to embrace Christ's holy madness ! 
Cry with me, cry as I now cry. 
Madness, madness, holy madness ! 

— the procession of boys and girls through the streets, 
shaming their elders into hypocritical piety, and breed- 
ing in their own hearts the intolerable priggishness of 
premature pietism — could not bring forth excellent 
and solid fruits. The change was far too violent. 
The temper of the race was not prepared for it. It 
clashed too rudely with Renaissance culture. It out- 
raged the sense of propriety in the more moderate 
citizens, and roused to vindictive fury the worst pas- 
sions of the self-indulgent and the worldly. A reac- 
tion was inevitable.^ 

/- Meanwhile the strong wine of prophecy intoxi- 
cated Savonarola. His fiery temperament, strained 
to the utmost by the dead weight of Florentine affairs 
that pressed upon him, became more irritable day by 
day. Vision succeeded vision ; trance followed upon 
trance; agonies of dejection were suddenly trans- 
formed into outbursts of magnificent and soul-sustain- 
ing enthusiasm. It was no ^yonder if, passing as he 
had done from the discipline of the cloister to the 



\ ' The position of the Puritan leaders in England was somewhat 
similar to Savonarola's. But they had at the end of a long war, the 
majority of the nation with them. Besides, the English temperament 
was more adapted to Puritanism than the Italian, nor were the mani- 
festations of piety prescribed by Parliament so extravagant. And yet 
even in England a reaction took place under the Restoration. 



STRUGGLE WITH ALEXANDER. 529 

dictatorship of a republic, he should make extravagant 
mistakes. The tension of this abnormal situation in 
the city grew to be excessive, and cool thinkers pre- 
dicted that Savonarola's position would become un- 
tenable. Parties began to form and gather to a head. 
The followers of the monk, by far the largest section 
of the people, received the name of Piagnoni or 
Frateschi. The friends of the Medici, few at first and 
cautious, were called Bigi. The opponents of Savo- 
narola and of the Medici, who hated his theocracy, but 
desired to see an oligarchy and not a tyranny in Flor- 
ence, were known as the Arrabbiati. 

The discontent which germinated in Florence dis- 
played itself in Rome. Alexander found it intoler- 
able to be assailed as Antichrist by a monk who had 
made himself master of the chief Italian republic. At 
first he used his arts of blandishment and honeyed 
words in order to lure Savonarola to Rome. The 
friar refused to quit Florence. Then Alexander sus- 
pended him from preaching. Savonarola obeyed, but 
wrote at the same time to Charles VIII. denouncing 
his indolence and calling upon him to reform the 
Church. At the request of the Florentine Republic, 
though still suffering from the Pope's interdict, he 
then resumed his preaching. Alexander sought next 
to corrupt the man he could not intimidate. To the 
suggestion that a Cardinal's hat might be offered him, 
Savonarola replied that he preferred the red crown of 
martyrdom. Ascending the pulpit of the Duomo in 
1496, he preached the most fiery of all his Lenten 



53© RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

courses. Of tHis series of orations Milman writes: 
* His triumphal career began with the Advent of 1494 
on Haggai and the Psalms. But it is in the Careme 
of 1496 on Amos and Zechariah that the preacher 
girds himself to his full strength, when he had at- 
tained his full authority, and could not but be con- 
scious that there was a deep and dangerous rebellion 
brooding in the hearts of the hostile factions at Flor- 
ence, and when already ominous rumors began to be 
heard from Rome. He that would know the power, 
the daring, the oratory of Savonarola, must study this 
volume.* ^ 

\ Ver}^ terrific indeed are the denunciations con- 
tained in these discourses — denunciations fulminated 
without disguise against the Pope and priests of Rome, 
against the Medici, against the Florentines themselves, 
in whom the traces of rebellion were beginning to 
appear. Mingled with these vehement invectives, 
couched in Savonarola's most impassioned style and 
heightened by his most impressive imagery, are po- 
litical harangues and polemical arguments against 
the Pope. The position assumed by the friar in his 
war with Rome was not a strong one, and the reason 
ing by which he supported it was marked by curious 
self-deception mingled with apparent efforts to deceive 
his audience. He had not the audacious originality 
of Luther. He never went to the length of braving 
Alexander by burning his bulls and by denying the 

' These sermons were printed from the notes taken by Lorenio 
Vloli in one volume at Venice, 1534. 



FAILING POWER. 53 1 

authority of popes in general. Not daring to break 
all connection with the Holy See, he was driven to 
quibble about the distinction between the office and 
the man, assuming a hazardous attitude of obedience 
to the Church whose head and chief he daily outraged. 
At the same time he took no pains to enlist the 
sympathies of the Italian princes, many of whom 
might presumably have been hostile to the Pope, on 
his side of the quarrel. All the tyrants came in for a 
share of his prophetic indignation. Lodovico Sforza, 
the lord of Mirandola, and Piero de' Medici felt them- 
selves specially aggrieved, and kept urging Alexander 
to extinguish this source of scandal to established 
governments. Against so great and powerful a host 
one man could not stand alone. Savonarola's posi- 
tion became daily more dangerous in Florence. The 
merchants, excommunicated by the Pope and thus 
exposed to pillage in foreign markets, grumbled at the 
friar who spoiled their trade. The ban of interdic- 
tion lay upon the city, where the sacraments could no 
longer be administered or the dead be buried with 
the rites of Christians. Meanwhile a band of high- 
spirited and profligate young men, called Compag- 
nacci, used every occasion to insult and interrupt him. 
At last in March 1498 his staunch friends, the Signory, 
or supreme executive of Florence, suspended him from 
preaching in the Duomo. Even the populace were 
weary of the protracted quarrel with the Holy See : 
nor could any but his own fanatical adherents anticipate 
the wars which threatened the state, with equanimity. 



532 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

Savonarola himself felt that the supreme houi 
was come. One more resource was left; to that 
he would now betake himself: he could afterwards 
but die. This last step was the convening of a 
general council.^ Accordingly he addressed letters 
to all the European potentates. One of these, in- 
scribed to Charles VIII., was dispatched, intercepted, 
and conveyed to Alexander. He wrote also to the 
Pope and warned him of his purpose. The termina- 
tion of that epistle is noteworthy : * I can thus have 
no longer any hope in your Holiness, but must turn 
to Christ alone, who chooses the weak of this world 
to confound the strong lions among the perverse 
generations. He will assist me to prove and sus- 
tain, in the face of the world, the holiness of the 
work for the sake of which I so greatly suffer : and 
He will inflict a just punishment on those who per- 
secute me and would impede its progress. As for 
myself, I seek no earthly glory, but long eagerly 
for death. May your Holiness no longer delay but 
look to your salvation.* 

'■ But while girding on his armor for this single- 
handed combat with the Primate of Christendom 
and the Princes of Italy, the martyrdom to which 
Savonarola now looked forward fell upon him. 
Growing yearly more confident in his visions and 

» This scheme was by no means utterly unpractical. The Borgia 

had only just escaped deposition in 1495 by the giftofaCardi^^l's h?t 
to the Bishop of S. Malo. He was hated no less than feared throug-W 
the length and breadth of Italy. But Savonarola had allowed the 
favorable moment to pass by. 



EXECUTION, 533 

more willing to admit his supernatural powers, he 
had imperceptibly prepared the pit which finally in- 
gulfed him. Often had he professed his readiness 
to prove his vocation by fire. Now came the mo- 
ment when this defiance to an ordeal was answered.^ 
A Franciscan of Apulia offered to meet him in the 
flames and see whether he were of God or not. 
Fra Domenico, Savonarola's devoted friend, took 
up the gauntlet and proposed himself as cham- 
pion. The furnace was prepared: both monks 
stood ready to enter it: all Florence was assem- 
bled in the Piazza to witness what should happen. 
Various obstacles, however, arose ; and after wait- 
ing a whole day for the friar's triumph, the people 
had to retire to their homes under a pelting shower 
of rain, unsatisfied, and with a dreary sense that 
after all their prophet was but a mere man. The 
Compagnacci got the upper hand. S. Mark's con- 
vent was besieged. Savonarola was led to prison, 
never to issue till the day of his execution by the 
rope and faggot. We may draw a veil over those 
last weeks. Little indeed is known about them, 
except that in his cell the Friar composed his 
meditations on the the 31st and 5ist Psalms, the 
latter of which was published in Germany with a 
preface by Luther in 1573. O^ ^^e rest we hear 

> There seems to be no doubt that this Ordeal by Fire was finally 
got up by the Compagnacci with the sanction of the Signory, who 
were anxious to relieve themselves by any means of Savonarola. The 
Franciscan chosen to enter the flames together with Fra Domenico 
was a certain Giuliano Rondinelli. Nardi calls him Andrea Kcn- 
dinelli. 



554 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

only of prolonged torture before stupid and malig- 
nant judges, of falsified evidence and of contradic- 
tory confessions. What he really said and chose 
to stand by, what he retracted, what he shrieked 
out in the delirium of the rack, and what was falsely 
imputed to him, no one now can settle.^ Though 
the spirit was strong, the flesh was weak; he had 
the will but not the nerve to be a martyr. At ten 
o'clock on the 23d of May 1498 he was led forth 
together with brother Salvestro, the confidant of 
his visions, and brother Domenico, his champion 
in the affair of the ordeal, to a stage prepared in 
the Piazza.2 These two men were hanged first. 

» Nardi, lib. ii. vol. i. p. 128, treats the whole matter of Savona- 
rola's confessions under torture with good sense. He says: ' Avendo 
domandato il frate quello che diceva e affermava delle sue esamine 
fatte infino a quel di, rispose, che cio ch' egli aveva ne' tempi passati 
detto e predetto era la pura verity, e che quello di che s'era ridetto e 
aveva ritratto, era tutto falso e era seguito per il dolor grande e per 
la paura che egli aveva de' tormenti, e che di nuovo si ridirebbe 
e ritratterebbe tante volte, quante ei fusse di nuovo tormentato, 
percio che si conosceva molto debole e inconstante nel sopportare i 
supplicii.' Burchard, in his Diary, reports the childish, foul, malig- 
nant gossip current in Rome. This may be read in the ' Preuves et 
Observations ' appended to the Menioirs of De Comines, vol. v. p. 512. 
See the Marchese Gino Capponi's Storia della Firenze (tom. ii. pp. 
248-51) for a critical analysis of the depositions falsely ascribed to 
Savonarola. 

2 There is a curious old picture in the Pinacoteca of Perugia which 
represents the burning of the three friars. The whole Piazza della 
Signoria is shown, with the houses of the fifteenth century, and with- 
out the statues which afterwards adorned it. The spectator fronts 
the Palazzo, and has to his extreme right the Loggia de' Lanzi. The 
center of the square is occupied by a great circular pile of billets and 
fagots, to which a wooden bridge of scaffolding leads from the left 
angle of the Polazzo. From the middle of the pile rises a pr'e, to 
which the bodies of the friars in their white clothes are suspended. 
Sta Maria del Fiore, the Badia lower, and the distant hills above 
Fiesole complete a scene whi::h is no doubt accurate in detaH. 



POSTHUMOUS INFLUENCE. 535 

Savonarola was left till the last. As the hangman 
tied the rope round his neck, a voice from the 
crowd shouted : * Prophet, now is the time to per- 
form a miracle ! ' The Bishop of Vasona, who con- 
ducted the execution, stripped his friars frock from 
him, and said, ' I separate thee from the Church 
militant and triumphant.' Savonarola, firm and com 
bative even at the point of death, replied, ' Militant, 
yes : triumphant, no : that is not yours.' The last 
words he uttered were, * The Lord has suffered as 
much for me.* Then the noose was tightened round 
his neck. The fire beneath was lighted. The flames 
did not reach his body while life was in it ; but 
those who gazed intently thought they saw the 
right hand give the sign of benediction. A little 
child afterwards saw his heart still whole among 
the ashes cast into the Arno; and almost to this 
day flowers have been placed every morning of 
the 23d of May upon the slab of the Piazza where 
his body fell. 

Thus died Savonarola: and immediately he be- 
came a saint. His sermons and other works were 
universally distributed. Medals in his honor were 
struck. Raphael painted him among the Doctors 
of the Church in the Camera della Segnatura of 
the Vatican. The Church, with strange inconsist- 
ency, proposed to canonize the man whom she had 
burned as a contumacious heretic and a corrupter 
of the people. This canonization never took place : 
but many Dominican Churches used a special office 



536 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

With his name and in his honor.^ A legend similar 
to that of S. Francis in its wealth of mythical de- 
tails embalmed the memory of even the smallest 
details of his life. But, above all, he lived in the 
hearts of the Florentines. For many years to come 
his name was the watchword of their freedom ; his 
prophecies sustained their spirit during the siege of 
1 5 28; 2 and it was only by returning to his policy 
that Niccolo Capponi and Francesco Carducci ruled 
the people through those troublous times. The po- 
litical action of Savonarola forms but a short epi- 
sode in the history of Florence. His moral revival 
belongs to the history of popular enthusiasm. His 
philosophical and theological writings are chiefly in- 
teresting to the student of post- mediaeval scholasti- 
cism. His attitude as a monastic leader of the 
populace, attempting to play the old game where- 
by the factious warfare of a previous age had been 
suspended by appeals to piety, and politicians had 
looked for aid outside the nation, was anachronistic. 
But his prophecy, his insight into the coming of a 
new era for the Church and for Italy, is a main fact 
in the psychology of the Renaissance. 

» Officio del Savonarola, with preface by Cesare Guasti. Firenze, 
1863. 

2 Guicciardini, in his Ricordi, No. i., refers the incredible ob- 
stinacy of the Florentines at this period in hoping against all hope and 
reason to Savonarola: ' questa ostina/ione ha causata in gran parte 
a fede di non potere perire, secondo le predicazioni di Fra Jeronimo 
da Ferrara.' 



CHAPTER X. 

CHARLES VIII. 

The Italian States confront the Great Nations of Europe — Policy ot 
Louis XI. of France — Character of Charles VIII. — Preparations 
'or the Invasion of Italy — Position of Lodovico Sforza — Diplomatic 
Difficulties in Italy after the Death of Lorenzo de' Medici — ^Weak- 
ness of the Republics — II Moro — The year 1494 — Alfonso of Naples 
— Inefficiency of the Allies to cope with France — Charles at Lyons 
is stirred up to the Invasion of Italy by Giuliano della Rovere — 
Charles at Asti and Pavia — Murder of Gian Galeazzo Sforza — Mis- 
trust in the French Army — Rapallo and Fivizzano — The Entrance 
into Tuscany — Part played by Piero ■ de' Medici — Charles at Pisa 
— His Entrance into Florence — Piero Capponi — The March on 
Rome — Entry into Rome — Panic of Alexander VI. — The March 
on Naples — The Spanish Dynasty: Alfonso and Ferdinand — Al- 
fonso II. escapes to Sicily — Ferdinand II. takes Refuge in Ischia — 
Charles at Naples — The League against the French — De Comines 
at Venice — Charles makes his Retreat by Rome, Siena, Pisa, and 
Pontremoli — The Battle of Fornovo — Charles reaches Asti and 
returns to France — Italy becomes the Prize to be fought for by 
France, Spain, and Germany — Importance of the Expedition of 
Charles VIII. 

One of the chief features of the Renaissance was 
the appearance for the first time on the stage of 
history of full-formed and colossal nations. France, 
Spain, Austria, and England are now to measure 
their strength. Venice, Florence, Milan, Naples, 
even Rome, are destined in the period that is open- 
ing for Europe to play but secondary parts. Italy, 
incapable of coping with these great powers, will 
became the mere arena of their contests, the object 



538 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

of their spoliations. Yet the Italians themselves 
were far from being conscious of this change. Ac- 
customed through three centuries to a system of 
diplomacy and intrigue among their own small states, 
they still thought more of the balance of power 
within the peninsula than of the means to be adopted 
for repelling foreign force. Their petty jealousies 
kept them disunited at an epoch when the best 
chance of national freedom lay in a federation. Firmly 
linked together in one league, or subject to a single 
prince, the Italians might not only have met their 
foes on equal ground, but even have taken a fore- 
most place among the modern nations.^ Instead of 
that, their princes were foolish enough to think that 
they could set France, Germany, or Spain in motion 
for the attainment of selfish objects within the nar- 
row sphere of Italian politics, forgetting the dispro- 
portion between these huge monarchies and a single 
city like Florence, a mere province like the Milanese. 
It was just possible for Lorenzo de' Medici to secure 
the tranquillity of Italy by combining the Houses of 
Sforza and of A^ragon with the Papal See in the 
chains of the same interested policy with the Com 
monwealth of Florence. It was ridiculous of Lodo- 
vico Sforza to fancy that he could bring the French 
into the game of peninsular intrigue without irrevo- 

> Read, however, Sismondi's able argument against the view that 
Italy, united as a single nation under a sovereign, would have been 
better off, vol. vii. p. 298 et seq. He is of opinion that her only chance 
lay in a Confederation. See chapter ii. above, for a discussion of 
this chance. 



ITALY AND EUROPE. 539 

cably ruining' its artificial equilibrium. The first sign 
of the alteration about to take place in European 
history was the invasion of Italy by Charles VIII. 
This holiday excursion of a hairbrained youth was 
as transient as a border-foray on a large scale. The 
so-called conquest was only less sudden than the 
subsequent loss of Italy by the Frencli. Yet the 
tornado which swept the peninsula from north to 
south, and returned upon its path from south to north 
within the space of a few months, left ineffaceable 
traces on the country which it traversed, and changed 
the whole complexion of the politics of Europe. 

The invasion of Italy had been long prepared in 
the counsels of Louis XL After spending his life- 
time in the consolidation of the French monarchy, 
he constructed an inheritance of further empire for 
his successors by dictating to the old King Rene of 
Anjou (1474) and to the Count of Maine (1481) the 
two wills by which the pretensions of the House of 
Anjou to the Crown of Naples were transmitted to 
the royal family of France.^ On the death of Louis, 
Charles VIII. became King in 1483. He was then 
aged only thirteen, and was still governed by his 
elder sister, Anne de Beaujeu.^ It was not until 

' Sismondi, vol. vi. p. 285. The Appendix of Pieces Justificatives 
to Philip de Comines' Memoirs contains the will of R^n6, King of 
Sicily, Count of Provence, dated July 22, 1474, by which he constitutes 
his nephew, Charles of Anjou, Duke of Calabria, Count of Maine, his 
heir-in-chief; as well as the will of Charles of Anjou, King of Sicily, 
Count of Provence, dated December 10, 1481, by which he makes 
Louis XI. his heir, naming Charles the Dauphin next in succession, 

* Her husband was a cadet of the House of Bourbon. 



540 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

1492 that he jtctiially took the reins of the kingdom 
into his own hands. This year, we may remark, 
is one of the most memorable dates in history. In 
1492 Columbus discovered America: in 1492 Rod- 
erigo Borgia was made Pope: in 1492 Spain be- 
came a nation by the conquest of Granada. Each 
of these events was no less fruitful of consequences 
to Italy than was the accession of Charles VIII. 
The discover;y of America, followed in another six 
years by Vasco de' Gama's exploration of the Indian 
seas, diverted the commerce of the world into new 
channels ; Alexander VI. made the Reformation and 
the Northern Schism certainties ; the consolidation 
of Spain prepared a way for the autocracy of 
Charles V. Thus the commercial, the spiritual, and 
the political scepter fell in this one year from the 
grasp of the Italians. 

Both Philip de Comines and Guicciardini have 
described the appearance and the character of the 
prince who was destined to play a part so prominent, 
so pregnant of results, and yet so trivial in the affairs 
of Europe. Providence, it would seem, deigns fre- 
quently to use for the most momentous purposes 
some pantaloon or puppet, environing with special 
protection and with the prayers and aspirations of 
whole peoples a mere manikin. Such a puppet was 
Charles. * From infancy he had been weak in con- 
stitution and subject to illness. His stature was short, 
and his face very ugly, if you except the dignity and 
vigor of his glance. His limbs were so dispropor- 



CHARACTER OF CHARLES VUL 54 1 

tioned that he had less the appearance of a man 
than of a monster. Not only was he ignorant of 
liberal arts, but he hardly knew his letters. Though 
eager to rule, he was in truth made for anything but 
that ; for while surrounded by dependents, he exer- 
cised no authority over them and preserved no kind 
of majesty. Hating business and fatigue, he dis- 
played in such matters as he took in hand a want 
of prudence and of judgment. His desire for glory 
sprang rather from impulse than from reason. His 
liberality was inconsiderate, immoderate, promiscu- 
ous. When he displayed inflexibility of purpose, it 
was more often an ill-founded obstinacy than firm- 
ness, and that which many people called his good- 
ness of nature rather deserved the name of coldness 
and feebleness of spirit.* This is Guicciardini s por- 
trait. De Comines is more brief: ' The king was 
young, a fledgling from the nest; provided neither 
with money nor with good sense ; weak, willful, and 
surrounded by foolish counselors.* 

These foolish counselors, or, as Guicciardini calls 
them, *men of low estate, body-servants for the most 
part of the king,' were headed by Stephen de Vesc, 
who had been raised from the post of the king's valet 
de chambre to be the Seneschal de Beaucaire, and by 
William Brigonnet, formerly a merchant, now Bishop 
of S. Malo. These men had everything to gain by an 
undertaking which would flatter the vanity of their 
master, and draw him into still closer relations with 
themselves. Consecuently, when the Count of Bel- 



542 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

gioioso arrived at the French Court from Milan, i ag- 
ing the king to press his claims on Naples, and 
promising him a free entrance into Italy through the 
province of Lombardy and the port of Genoa, he found 
ready listeners. Anne de Beaujeu in vain opposed the 
scheme. The splendor and novelty of the proposal to 
conquer such a realm as Italy inflamed the imagination 
of Charles, the cupidity of his courtiers, the ambition 
of de Vesc and Brigonnet. In order to assure his situ- 
ation at home, Charles concluded treaties with the 
neighboring great powers. He bought peace with 
Henry VII. of England by the payment of large sums 
of money. The Emperor Maximilian, whose resent- 
ment he had aroused by sending back his daughter 
Margaret after breaking his promise to marry her, and 
by taking to wife Anne of Brittany, who was already 
engaged to the Austrian, had to be appeased by the 
cession of provinces. Ferdinand of Spain received 
as the price of his neutrality the strong places of the 
Pyrenees which formed the key to France upon that 
side. Having thus secured tranquillity at home by 
ruinous concessions, Charles was free to turn his at- 
tention to Italy. He began by concentrating stores 
and ships on the southern ports of Marseilles and 
Genoa; then he moved downward with his army, 
to Lyons, in 1494. 

At this point we are called to consider the affairs 
of Italy, which led the Sforza to invite his dangerous 
ally. Lorenzo de' Medici during his lifetime had 
maintained a balance of power between the several 



ALLIANCE WITH KING FERDINAND, 543 

States by his treaties with the Courts of Milan, Na- 
ples, and Ferrara. When he died, Piero at once 
showed signs of departure from his father s policy. 
The son and husband of Orsini,^ he embraced the 
feudal pride and traditional partialities of the great 
Roman house who had always been devoted to the 
cause of Naples. The suspicions of Lodovico Sforza 
were not unreasonably aroused by noticing that the 
tyrant of Florence inclined to the alliance of King 
Ferdinand rather than to his own friendship. At this 
same time Alfonso, the Duke of Calabria, heir to the 
throne of Naples, was pressing the rights of his son- 
in-law, Gian Galeazzo Sforza, on the attention of Italy, 
complaining loudly that his uncle Lodovico ought no 
longer to withhold from him the reins of government.* 
Gian Galeazzo was in fact the legitimate successor of 
Galeazzo Maria Sforza, who had been murdered in 
Santo Stefano in 1476. After this assassination Ma- 
donna ,Bona of Savoy and Cecco Simonetta, who had 
administered the Duchy as grand vizier during three 
reigns extending over a period of half a century, gov- 
erned Milan as regents for the young Duke. But 
Lodovico, feeling himself powerful enough to assume 

> His mother Clarice and his wife Alfonsina were both of them 
Orsini. Guicciardini, in his ' Dialogo del Reggimento di Firenze 
{Op. Ined. vol. ii. p. 46), says of him: ' sendo nato di mad re forestiera, 
era imbastardito in lui il sangue Fiorentino, e degenerato in costiimi 
esterni, e troppo insolenti e altieri al nostro vivere.' Piero, neverthe- 
less, refused to accept estates from King Alfonso which would have 
made him a Baron and feudatory of Naples. See Arch. Stor. vol. i, 

p. 347. 

• The young Duke was aged twenty-four in 1493. 



544 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

the tyranny, beheaded SImonetta at Pavia in 1480, 
and caused Madonna Bona, the Duke's mother, on 
the pretext of her immorality, to quit the regency. 
Thus he took the affairs of Milan into his own hands, 
confined his nephew in an honorable prison, and acted 
in a way to make it clear that he intended thenceforth 
to be Duke in fact.^ It was the bad conscience in- 
separable from this usurpation which made him mis- 
trust the princes of the house of Aragon, v^hose 
rights in Isabella, wife of the young Duke, were set at 
nought by him. The same uneasy sense of wrong in- 
clined him to look with dread upon the friendship of 
the Medici for the ruling family of Naples. 

While affairs were in this state, and as yet no open 
disturbance in Lorenzo's balance of power had taken 
place, Alexander VI. was elected to the Papacy. It 
was usual for the princes and cities of Italy to com- 
pliment the Pope with embassies on his assumption 
of the tiara; and Lodovico suggested that the repre- 
sentatives of Milan, Florence, Ferrara, and Naples 
:ohould enter Rome together in a body. The foolish 
vanity of Piero, who wanted to display the splend-ot 
of his own equipage without rivals, induced him to 
refuse this proposal, and led to a similar refusal on the 
part of Ferdinand. This trivial circumstance con- 
firmed the suspicions of Lodovico, who, naturally 

» Lodovico had taken measures for cloaking his usurpation with 
the show of legitimate right. He betrothed his niece Bianca Maria, 
in 1494, to the Emperor Maximilian, with a dower of 400,000 ducats, 
receiving in return an investiture of the Duchy, which, however, he 
kept secret. 



RUPTURE BETWEEN ROME AND NAPLES. 545 

subtle and Intriguing, thought that he discerned a 
deep political design in what was really little more 
than the personal conceit of a broad-shouldered sim- 
plcton.i He already foresaw that the old system of 
alliances established by Lorenzo must be abandoned. 

Another slight incident contributed to throw the 
affairs of Italy into confusion by causing a rupture 
between Rome and Naples. Lorenzo, by the mar- 
riag-^ of his daughter to Franceschetto Cibo, had con- 
trive d to engage Innocent VIII. in the scheme of 
policy which he framed for Florence, Naples, Milan, 
and Ferrara. But on the accession of Alexander, 
Franceschetto Cibo determined to get rid of An- 
guillara, Cervetri, and other fiefs, which he had 
taken with his father's connivance from the Church. 
He found a purchaser in Virginio Orsini. Alexan- 
der complained that the sale was an infringement 
of his rights. Ferdinand supported the title of the 
Orsini, to his new acquisitions. This alienated the 
Pope from the King of Naples, and made him will- 
ing to join with Milan and Venice In a new league 
formed in 1493. 

Thus the old equilibrium was destroyed, and fresh 
combinations between the disunited powers of Italy 
took place. Lodovico, however, dared not trust his 
new friends. Venice had too long hankered aftei 



* Piero de' Medici was what the French call a bel homme, and 
little more. He was tall, muscular, and well-made, the best player 
^X. pa Hone in Italy, a good horseman, fluent and agreeable in conver- 
sation, and excessively vain of these advantages. 



546 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

Milan to be depended upon for real support; and 
Alexander was known to be in treaty for a matri- 
monial alliance between his son Geoffrey and Donna 
Sancia of Aragon. Lodovico was therefore alone, 
without a firm ally in Italy, and with a manifestly 
fraudulent title to maintain. At this juncture he 
turned his eyes towards France; while his father- 
in-law, the Duke of Ferrara, who secretly hated 
him, and who selfishly hoped to secure his own 
advantage in the general confusion which he an- 
ticipated, urged him to this fatal course. Alex- 
ander at the same time, wishing to frighten the 
princes of Naples into a conclusion of the pro- 
jected marriage, followed the lead of Lodovico, 
and showed himself at this moment not averse to 
a French invasion. 

It was in this way that the private cupidities and 
spites of princes brought woe on Italy: Lodovico's 
determination to secure himself in the usurped Duchy 
of Milan, Ercole d' Este's concealed hatred, and Alex- 
ander's unholy eagerness to aggrandize his bastards, 
were the vile and trivial causes of an event which, 
however inevitable, ought to have been as long as 
possible deferred by all true patriots in Italy. But 
in Italy there was no zeal for freedom left, no honor 
among princes, no virtue in the Church. Italy, which 
in the thirteenth century numbered 1,800,000 citizens 
— that is, members of free cities, exercising the fran- 
chise in the government of their own states — could 
show in the fifteenth only about 18,000 such burgh- 



LODOVICO SFORZA. 347 

ers : ^ and these in Venice were subject to the tyr- 
anny of the Council of Ten, in Florence had been 
enervated by the Medici, in Siena were reduced by 
party feuds and vulgar despotism to political imbe- 
cility. Amid all the splendors of revived literature 
and art, of gorgeous courts and refined societies, this 
indeed was the right moment for the Dominican vis- 
ionary to publish his prophecies, and for the hunch- 
back puppet of destiny to fulfill them. Guicciardini 
deplores, not without reason, the bitter sarcasm of 
fate which imposed upon his country the insult of 
such a conqueror as Charles. He might with equal 
justice have pointed out in Lodovico Sforza the actor 
of a tragi-comic part upon thestage of Italy. Lodo- 
vico, called II Moro, not, as the great historian as- 
serts, because he was of dark complexion, but be- 
cause he had adopted the mulberry - tree for his 
device ,2 was in himself an epitome of all the qual- 
ities which for the last two centuries had contributed 
to the degradation of Italy in the persons of the des- 

1 This is Sismondi's calculation (vol. vii. p. 305). It must be taken 
as a rough one. Still students who have weighed the facts presented 
in Ferrari's Rivoluzioni cV Italia will not think the estimate exag- 
gerated. In the municipal and civil wars, free burghs were extin« 
guished by the score. 

2 See Varchi, vol. i. p. 49. Also the Elogia of Paulus Jovius, who 
remarks that the complexion of Lodovico was fair. His surname, 
however, provoked puns. He had, for example, a picture painted, 
in which Italy, dressed like a queen, is having her robe brushed by a 
Moorish page. A motto ran beneath. Per Italia nettar d" ogni 
bruttura. He adopted the mulberry because Pliny called it the most 
prudent of all trees, inasmuch as it waits till winter is well over to 
put forth its leaves, and Lodovico piqued himself on his sagacity in 
choosing the right moment for action. 



548 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

pots. Gifted originally with good abilities, he had so 
accustomed himself to petty intrigues that he was 
now incapable of taking a straightforward step in 
any direction. While he boasted himself the Son 
of Fortune and listened with complacency to a fool- 
ish rhyme that ran : God only and the Moor foreknow 
the future safe and sure, he never acted without 
blundering, and lived to end his days in the Intol- 
erable tedium of imprisonment at Loches. He was 
a thoughtful and painstaking ruler; yet he so far 
failed to win the affection of his subjects that they 
tossed up their caps for joy at the first chance of 
getting rid of him. He disliked bloodshed; but the 
judicial murder of Simonetta, and the arts by which 
he forced his nephew Into an early grave, have left 
an Ineffaceable stain upon his memory. His court 
was adorned by the presence of Lionardo da Vinci; 
but at the same time It was so corrupt that, as Corio 
tells us,^ fathers sold their daughters, brothers their 
sisters, and husbands their wives there. In a word 
Lodovico, In spite of his boasted prudence, wrought 
the ruin of Italy and himself by his tortuous policy, 
and contributed by his private crimes and dissolute 
style of living no little to the general depravity of 
his country.2 

> L Historia di Milano, Vinegia, 1554, p. 448: * A quella (scola 
di Venere) per ogni canto vi si convenivan bellissimi giovani. I 
padri vi concedevano le figliuole, i mariti le mogliere, i fratelli le 
sorelle; e per sifatto modo senz' alcun riguardo molti concorreano 
air amoroso ballo, che cosa stupendissima era riputata per qualunquc 
i' intendeva.' 

« Guicciardini, Storia d" Italia, lib. iii. p. 35, sums up the char- 
acter of Lodovico with masterly completeness. 



EXPECTATION OF CHANGE, 549 

Amid this general perturbation of the old political 
order the year 1494, marked in its first month by the 
death of King Ferdinand, began — * a year,' to quote 
from Guicciardini, * the most unfortunate for Italy, the 
very first in truth of our disastrous years, since it 
opened the door to numberless and horrible calami- 
ties, in which it may be said that a great portion of 
the world has subsequently shared/ The expectation 
and uneasiness of the whole nation were proportioned 
to the magnitude of the coming change. On every 
side the invasion of the French was regarded with 
that sort of fascination which a very new and exciting 
event is wont to inspire. In one mood the Italians 
were inclined to hail Charles as a general pacificator 
and restorer of old liberties.^ Savonarola had preached 
of him as "Ca^flagellum Dei, the minister appointed to 
regenerate the Church and purify the font of spirit- 
ual life In the peninsula. In another frame of mind 
they shuddered to think what the advent of the bar- 
barians — so the French were called — might bring 
upon them. It was universally agreed that Lodovico 
by his invitation had done no more than bring down, 
as It were, by a breath the avalanche which had been 
long Impending. * Not only the preparations made 
by land and sea, but also the consent of the heavens 
and of men, announced the woes In store for Italy. 

» This was the strictly popular as opposed to the aristocratic 
feeling. The common folk, eager for novelty and smarting unier 
the bad rule of monsters like the Aragonese princes, expectea in 
Charies VIII. a Messiah, and cried ' Benedictus qui venit in nomiDO 
Domini.' See passages quoted in a note below. 



550 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

Those who pretend either by art or divine inspiration 
to the knowledge of the future, proclaimed unani- 
mously that greater and more frequent changes, oc- 
currences more strange and awful than had for many 
centuries been seen in any part of the world, were at 
hand.' After enumerating divers signs and portents, 
such as the passing day after day in the region round 
Arezzo of innumerable armed men mounted on gi- 
gantic horses with a hideous din of drums and trum- 
pets, the great historian resumes : * These things filled 
the people with incredible fear ; for, long before, they 
had been terrified by the reputation of the power of 
the French and of their fierceness, seeing that histo- 
ries are full of their deeds — how they had already 
overrun the whole of Italy, sacked the city of Rome 
with fire and sword, subdued many provinces of Asia, 
and at one time or another smitten with their arms all 
quarters of the world.' 

Among all the potentates of Italy, Alfonso of 
Naples had the most to dread ; for against him the 
invasion was specially directed. No time was to be 
lost. He assembled his allies at Vicovaro near Tivoli 
in July and explained to them his theory of resistance. 
The allies were Florence, Rome, Bologna, and all the 
minor powers of Romagna.^ For once the «sOuthern 



J Venice remained neutral. She had refused to side with Charles, 
on the pretext that the fear of the Turk kept her eng^aged. She de- 
clined to join the league of Alfonso by saying it was mad to save 
others at the risk of drawing the war into your own territory. Noth- 
ing is more striking than the want of patriotic sentiment or genero:is 
concurrence to a common end in Italy at this time. Florence, by 



ALFONSO OF NAPLES, 55 1 

and the middle states of Italy were united against a 
common foe. After Alfonso, Alexander felt himself 
in greatest peril, for he dreaded the assembly of a 
Council which might depose him from the throne he 
had bought by simony. So strong was his terror that 
he had already sent ambassadors to the Sultan implor- 
ing him for aid against the Most Christian King, and 
had entreated Ferdinand the Catholic, instead of un- 
dertaking a crusade against the Turk, to employ his 
arms in opposition to the French. But Bajazet was 
too far off to be of use ; and Ferdinand was prudent. 
It remained for the allies to repel the invader by their 
unassisted force. This might have been done if Al- 
fonso's plan had been adhered to. He designed send- 
ing a fleet, under his brother Don Federigo, to Genoa, 
and holding with his own troops the passes of the 
Apennines to the North, while Piero de* Medici un- 
dertook to guard the entrances to Tuscany on the 
side of Lunigiana. The Duke of Calabria meanwhile 
was to raise Gian Galeazzo's standard in Lombardy. 
But that absolute agreement which is necessary in the 
execution of a scheme so bold and comprehensive was 
impossible in Italy. The Pope insisted that attention 
should first be paid to the Colonnesi — Prospero and 
Fabriz'o being secret friends of France, and their 
castles offering a desirable booty. Alfonso, therefore, 
determined to occupy the confines of the Roman terri- 



temper and tradition favorable to France, had been drawn into the 
league by Piero de* Medici, whose sympathies were firm for the 
Aragonese princes. 



552 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

tory on the side 6f the Abruzzi, while he sent his son, 
with the generals Giovan Jacopo da Trivulzi and the 
Count of Pitigliano, into Lombardy. They never ad- 
vanced beyond Cesena, where the troops of the Sforza, 
in conjunction with the French, held them at bay. 
The fleet under Don Federigo sailed too late to effect 
the desired rising in Genoa. The French, forewarned, 
had thrown 2,000 Swiss under the Baily of Dijon and 
the Duke of Orleans into the city, and the Neapolitan 
admiral fell back upon Leghorn. The forces of the 
league were further enfeebled and divided by the ne- 
cessity of leaving Virginio Orsini to check the Colon- 
nesi in the neighborhood of Rome. How utterly 
Piero de' Medici by his folly and defection ruined what 
remained of the plan will be seen in the sequel. This 
sluggishness in action and dismemberment of forces — 
this total inability to strike a sudden blow — sealed be- 
forehand the success of Charles. Alfonso, a tyrant 
afraid of his own subjects, Alexander, a Pope who had 
bought the tiara to the disgust of Christendom, Piero, 
conscious that his policy was disapproved by the Flor- 
entines, together with a parcel of egotistical petty des- 
pots, were not the men to save a nation. Italy was 
conquered, not by the French king, but by the vices 
of her own leaders. The whole history of Charles's 
expedition is one narrative of headlong rashness tri- 
umphing over difficukies and dangers which only the 
discord of tyrants and the disorganization of peoples 
rendered harmless. The Ate of the gods had de- 
scended upon Italy, as though to justify the common 



CHARLES ENTERS ITALY, 553 

brJfef that the expedition of Charles was divinely sus- 
tained and guided.^ 

While Alfonso and Alexander were providing for 
their safety in the South, Charles remained at Lyons, 
still uncertain whether he should enter Italy by sea 
or land, or indeed whether he should enter it at all. 
Having advanced so far as the Rhone valley, he felt 
satisfied with his achievement and indulged himself 
in a long bout of tournaments and pastimes. Be- 
sides, the want of money, which was to be his 
chief embarrassment throughout the expedition, had 
already made itself felt.^ It was an Italian who at 
length roused him to make good his purpose against 
Italy — Giuliano della Rovere,^ the haughty nephew 
of Sixtus, the implacable foe of Alexander, whom 
he was destined to succeed in course oi lime upon 
the Papal throne. Burning to punish the Marrano, 
or apostate Moor, as he called Alexander, Giuliano 
stirred the king with taunts and menaces until Charles 
felt he could delay his march no longer. When once 
the French army got under weigh, it moved rapidly. 

» This, of course, was Savonarola's prophecy. But both Guicci- 
ardini and De Comines use invariably the same language. The 
phrase Dieu monstroit conduire Fentreprise frequently recurs in the 
Memoirs of De Comines. 

2 ' La despense de ces navires estoit fort grande, et suis d'advis 
qu'elle cousta trois cens mille francs, et si ne servit de rien, et y alia 
tout 1 argent contant que ie Roy pent finer de ses finances: car 
comme j'ay dit, il n'estoit point pourveu ne de sens, ne d'argent, ny 
d'autre chose n^cessaire ^ telle entreprise, et si en vint bien i bout, 
moyennant la grace de Dieu, qui clairement le donna ainsi k cog- 
noistre.' De Comines, lib. vii. 

> Guicciardini calls him on this occasion 'fatale instrumeDto e 
allora e prima e poi de' mali d' Italia.' Lib. i. cap. 3. 



554 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

Leaving Vienne on August 23, 1494, 3,600 men at 
arms, the flower of the French chivalry, 6,000 Breton 
archers, 6,000 crossbowmen, 8,000 Gascon infantry, 
8,000 Swiss and German lances, crossed the Mont 
Genevre, debouched on Susa, passed through Turin, 
and entered Asti on September 19.^ Neither Pied- 
mont nor Montferrat stirred to resist them. Yet at 
almost any point upon the route they might have 
been at least delayed by hardy mountaineers until 
the commissariat of so large a force had proved an 
insurmountable difficulty. But before this hunchback 
conqueror with the big head and littl'e legs, the val- 
leys had been exalted and the rough places had been 
made plain. The princes whose interest it might 
have been to throw obstacles in the way of Charles 
were but children. The Duke of Savoy was only 
twelve years old, the Marquis of Montferrat four- 
teen ; their mothers and guardians made terms with 
the French king, and opened their territories to his 
armies. 

At Asti Charles was met by Lodovico Sforza and 
his father-in-law, Ercole d' Este. The whole of that 
Milanese Court which Corio describes 2 followed in 
their train. It was the policy of the Italian princes 
to entrap their conqueror with courtesies, and to en- 



« I have followed the calculation of Sismondi (vol. vii. p. 383), *o 
which should be added perhaps another 10,000 in all attached to the 
artillery, and 2,000 for sappers, miners, carpenters, etc. See Dennis- 
toun, Dukes of Urbi7io, vol. i. p. 433, for a detailed list of Charles'* 
armaments by land and sea. 

• See above, p. 548. 



CHARLES IN LOMBARDY, 555 

tangle in silken meshes the barbarian they dreadc^d 
What had happened already at Lyons, what wa- 
going to repeat itself at Naples, took place at Asti 
The French king lost his heart to ladies, and con 
fused his policy by promises made to Delilahs in 
the ballroom. At Asti he fell ill of the small-pox, 
but after a short time he recovered his health, and 
proceeded to Pavia. Here a serious entanglement 
of interests arose. Charles was bound by treaties 
and engagements to Lodovico and his proud wife 
Beatrice d' Este; the very object of his expedition 
was to dethrone Alfonso and to assume the crown 
of Naples ; yet at Pavia he had to endure the pa- 
thetic spectacle of his forlorn cousin ^ the young 
Giovanni Galeazzo Sforza in prison, and to hear 
the piteous pleadings of the beautiful Isabella of 
Aragon. Nursed in chivalrous traditions, incapa- 
ble of resisting a woman's tears, what was Charles 
to do, when this princess in distress, the wife of 
his first cousin, the victim of his friend Lodovico, 
the sister of his foe Alfonso, fell at his feet and 
besought him to have mercy on her husband, on 
her brother, on herself? The situation was indeed 
enough to move a stouter heart than that of the 
feeble young king. For the moment Charles re- 
turned evasive answers to his petitioners; but the 
trouble of his soul was manifest, and no sooner had 
he set forth on his way to Piacenza than the Moor 

> The mothers of Charles VIII. and Gian Galeazzo were sisters. 
prim.esses of Savoy. 



556 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

resolved to remove the cause of further vacillation. 
Sending to Pavia, Lodovico had his nephew poi- 
soned.i When the news of Gian Galeazzo's death 
reached the French camp, it spread terror and im- 
bittered the mistrust which was already springing 
up between the frank cavaliers and the plausible 
Italians with whom they had to deal. 

What was this beautiful land in the midst of 
which they found themselves, a land whose marble 
palaces were thronged with cut-throats In disguise, 
whose princes poisoned while they smiled, whose 
luxuriant meadows concealed fever, whose ladies 
carried disease upon their lips? To the captains 
and the soldiery of France, Italy already appeared 
a splendid and fascinating Circe, arrayed with 
charms, surrounded with illusions, hiding behind 
perfumed thickets her victims changed to brutes, 
and building the couch of her seduction on the 
bones of murdered men. Yet she was so beauti- 
ful that, halt as they might for a moment and gaze 

« Sismondi does not discuss the fact minutely, but he inclines to 
believe that Gian Galeazzo was murdered. Michelet raises a doubt 
about it, though the evidence is such as he would have accepted 
without question in the case of a Borgia. Guicciardini, who re- 
counts the whole matter at length, says that all 'taly believed the 
Duke had been murdered, and quotes Teodoro era Pavia, one of the 
royal physicians, who attested to having seen clear signs of a slow poi- 
son in the young man. Pontano, de Prudetitia, lib. 4, repeats the 
accusation. Guicciardini only doubts Lodovico's motives. He in- 
clines to think the murder had been planned long before, and that 
Charles was invited into Italy in order that Lodovico might have a 
good opportunity for effecting it, while at the same time he had taken 
care to get the investiture of the Duchy from the Emperor ready 
igainst the event. 



MASSACRES OF THE INHABITANTS, $57 

back with yearning on the Alps that they had 
crossed, they found themselves unable to resist 
her smile. Forward they must march through the 
garden of enchantment, henceforth taking the pre- 
caution to walk with drawn sword, and, like Or- 
lando in Morgana's park, to stuff their casques with 
roses that they might not hear the siren's voice 
too clearly. It was thus that Italy began the part 
she played through the Renaissance for the people 
of the North. The White Devil of Italy is the 
title of one of Webster's best tragedies. A white 
Devil, a radiant daughter of sin and death, hold- 
ing in her hands the fruit of the knowledge of good 
and evil, and tempting the nations to eat: this is 
how Italy struck the fancy of the men of the six- 
teenth century. " She was feminine, and they were 
virile ; but she could teach and they must learn. 
She gave them pleasure; they brought force. The 
fruit of her embraces with the nations was the 
spirit of modern culture, the genius of the age in 
which we live. 

Two terrible calamities warned the Italians with 
what new enemies they had to deal. Twice at the 
commencement of the invasion did the French use 
the sword which they had drawn to intimidate the 
sorceress. These terror-striking examples were the 
massacres of the inhabitants of Rapallo on the Geno- 
ese Riviera, and of Fivizzano in Lunigiana. Soldiers 
and burghers, even prisoners and wounded men in 
the hospitals, were butchered, first by the Swiss 



558 RENAISSANCE TN ITALY, 

and German guards, and afterwards by the French, 
who would not be outdone by them in energy 
It was thus that the Italians, after a century of 
bloodless battles and parade campaigning, learned 
a new art of war, and witnessed the first act of 
those Apocalyptic tragedies which were destined 
to drown the peninsula with French, Spanish, Ger- 
man, Swiss, and native blood. 

Meanwhile the French host had reached Parma, 
traversing, all through the golden autumn weather, 
those plains where mulberry and elm are married 
by festoons of vines above a billowy expanse of 
maize and corn. From Parma, placed beneath the 
northern spurs of the Apennines, to Sarzana, on 
the western coast of Italy, where the marbles of 
Carrara build their barrier against the Tyrrhene Sea, 
there leads a winding barren mountain pass. Charles 
took this route with his army, and arrived in the 
beginning of November before the walls of Sarzana. 
Meanwhile we may well ask what Piero de' Medici 
had been doing, and how he had fulfilled his engage- 
ment with Alfonso. He had undertaken, it will be 
remembered, to hold the passes of the Apennines 
upon this side. To have embarrassed the French 
troops among those limestone mountains, thinly for- 
ested with pine and chestnut- trees, and guarded here 
and there with ancient fortresses, would have been a 
matter of no difficulty. With like advantages 2,000 
Swiss troops during their wars of independence would 
have laughed to scorn the whole forces of Burgundy 



mvASTO^r OF ptsa. 559 

and Austria. But Plero, a feeble and false tyrant, 
preoccupied with Florentine factions, afraid of Lucca, 
and disinclined to push forward into the territory 
of the Sforza, had as yet done nothing when the 
news arrived that Sarzana was on the point of 
capitulation. In this moment of peril he rode as 
fast as horses could carry him to the French camp, 
besought an interview with Charles, and then and 
there delivered up to him the keys of Sarzana and 
its citadel, together with those of Pietra Santa, 
Librafratta, Pisa, and Leghorn. Any one who has 
followed the sea-coast between Pisa and Sarzana 
can appreciate the enormous value of these con- 
cessions to the invader. They relieved him of the 
difficulty of forcing his way along a narrow belt of 
land, which is hemmed in on one side by the sea and 
on the other by the highest and most abrupt moun- 
tain range in Italy. To have done this in the teeth 
of a resisting army and beneath the walls of hostile 
castles would have been all but impossible. As it 
was, Piero cut the Gordian knot by his incredible 
cowardice, and for himself gained only ruin and dis- 
honor. Charles, the foe against whom he had plotted 
with Alfonso and Alexander, laughed in his face and 
marched at once into Pisa. The Florentines, whom 
he had hitherto engaged in an unpopular policy, now 
rose in fury, expelled him from the city, sacked his 
palace, and erased from their memory the name of 
Medici except for execration. The unsuccessful ty- 
rant, who had proved a traitor to his allies, to his 



560 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

country, and to himself, saved his life by flying first 
to Bologna and thence to Venice, where he remained 
in a sort of polite captivity — safe, but a slave, until 
the Doge and his council saw which way affairs 
would tend. 

On the 9th of November Florence after a tyranny 
of fifty years, and Pisa after the servitude of a century, 
recovered their liberties and were able to reconstitute 
republican governments. But the situation of the two 
states was very different. The Florentines had never 
lost the name of liberty, which in Italy at that period 
meant less the freedom of the inhabitants to exercise 
self-government than the independence of the city in 
relation to its neighbors. The Pisans on the other 
hand had been reduced to subjection by Florence: their 
civic life had been stifled, their pride wounded in the 
tenderest point of honor, their population decimated 
by proscription and exile. The great sin of Florence 
was the enslavement of Pisa: and Pisa in this moment 
of anarchy burned to obliterate her shame with blood- 
shed. The French, understanding none of the niceties 
of Italian politics, and ignorant that In giving freedom to 
Pisa they were robbing Florence of her rights, looked 
on with wonder at the citizens who tossed the lion of 
the tyrant town into the Arno and took up arms against 
its officers. It is sad to witness this last spasm of the 
long-suppressed passion for liberty in the Pisans, while 
we know how soon they were reduced again to slavery 
by the selfish sister state, herself too thoroughly corrupt 
for liberty. The part of Charles, who espoused the 



PISA LIBERATED. 561 

cause of the PIsans with blundering carelessness, pre- 
tended to protect the new republic, and then aban- 
doned it a few months later to Its fate, provokes 
nothing but the languid contempt which all his act*? 
inspire. 

After the flight of Piero and the proclamation of 
Pisan liberty the King of France was hailed as saviour 
of the free Italian towns. Charles received a magnifi- 
cent address from Savonarola, who proceeded to Pisa, 
and harangued him as the chosen vessel of the Lord 
and the deliverer of the Church from anarchy. At 
the same time the friar conveyed to the French king 
a courteous invitation from the Florentine republic to 
enter their city and enjoy their' hospitality. Charles, 
after upsetting Piero de' Medici with the nonchalance 
of a horseman In the tilting yard, and restoring the 
freedom of Pisa for a caprice, remained as devoid of 
policy and Indifferent to the part assigned him by the 
prophet as he was before. He rode, armed at all 
points, into Florence on November 17, and took up 
his residence In the palace of the Medici. Then he 
informed the elders of the city that he had come as 
conqueror and not as guest, and that he Intended to 
reserve to himself the disposition of the state. 

It was a dramatic moment. Florence, with the 
Arno flowing through her midst, and the hills around 
her gray with olive-trees, was then even more lovely 
than we see her now. The whole circuit of her walls 
remained, nor had their crown of towers been leveled 
yet to make resistance of invading force more easy 



562 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

Brunelleschi's dome and Giotto's tower and Arnolfo's 
Palazzo and the Loggle of Orcagna gave distinction 
to her streets and squares. Her churches were splen- 
did with frescoes in their bloom, and with painted 
glass, over which as yet the injury of but a few brief 
years had passed. Her palaces, that are as strong as 
castles, overflowed with a population cultivated, pol- 
ished, elegant, refined, and haughty. This Florence, 
the city of scholars, artists, intellectual sybarites, and 
citizens in whom the blood of the old factions beat, 
found herself suddenly possessed as a prey of war by 
flaunting Gauls in their outlandish finery, plumed Ger- 
mans, kilted Celts, and particolored Swiss. On the 
other hand these barbarians awoke in a terrestrial 
paradise of natural and aesthetic beauty. Which of 
us who has enjoyed the late gleams of autumn in 
Valdarno, but can picture to himself the revelation of 
the inner meaning of the world, incomprehensible yet 
soul-subduing, which then first dawned upon the 
Breton bowmen and the bulls of Uri? Their im- 
pulse no doubt was to pillage and possess the wealth 
before them, as a child pulls to pieces the wonderful 
flower that has surprised it on some mountain meadow. 
But in the very rudeness of desire they paid a homage 
to the new-found loveliness of which they had not 
dreamed before. 

Charles here as elsewhere showed his imbecility. 
He had entered and laid hands on hospitable Flor- 
ence like a foe. What would he now do with her 
—reform the republic — legislate — impose a levy on 



CHARLES IN FLORENCE. 563 

the citizens, and lead them forth to battle ? No. He 
asked for a huge sum of money, and began to bar- 
gain. The Florentine secretaries refused his terms. 
He insisted. Then Piero Capponi snatched the paper 
on which they were written, and tore it in pieces be- 
fore his eyes. Charles cried: ' I shall sound my trum- 
pets.' Capponi answered: * We will ring our bells.' 
Beautiful as a dream is Florence; but her somber 
streets, overshadowed by gigantic belfries and masked 
by grim brown palace-fronts, contained a menace that 
the French king could not face. Let Capponi sound 
the tocsin, and each house would become a fortress, 
the streets would be barricaded with iron chains, 
every quarter would pour forth men by hundreds 
well versed in the arts of civic warfare. Charles 
gave way, covering with a bad joke the discomfi- 
ture he felt: Ah, Ciappon, Ciappon, vol siete un mal 
Ciappon ! The secretaries beat down his terms. All 
he cared for was to get money.^ He agreed to con- 
tent himself with 120,000 florins. A treaty was 
signed, and in two days he quitted Florence. 

Hitherto Charles had met with no serious obsta- 
cle. His invasion had fallen like the rain from heaven, 



» The want of money determined all Charles's operations in this 
expedition. Borrowing from Lodovico, laying- requisitions on Piero 
and the Florentines, pawning the jewels of the Savoy princesses, he 
passed from place to place, bargaining and contracting debts instead 
of dictating laws and founding consvitutions. La carestia dei danari 
is a phrase continually recurring in Guicciardini. Speaking of the 
jewels lent to Charles by the royal families of Savoy and Montferrat 
at Turin, de Comines exclaims: ' Et pouvez voir quel commencement 
de guerre c'estoit, si Dieu n'eut guid^ I'oeuvre.' 



564 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

and like rain, as far as he was concerned, it ran away 
to waste. Lombardy and Tuscany, the two first 
scenes In the pageant displayed by Italy before the 
French army, had been left behind. Rome now lay 
before them, magnificent in desolation; not the Rome 
which the Farnesi and Chigi and Barberini have built 
up from the quarried ruins of amphitheaters and baths, 
but the Rome of the Middle Ages, the city crowned 
with relics of a pagan past, herself still pagan, and 
holding in her midst the modern Antichrist. The 
progress of the French was a continued triumph. 
They reached Siena on the second of December. 
The Duke of Urbino and the lords of Pesaro and 
Bologna laid down their arms at their approach. 
The Orsini opened their castles: Virginio, the cap- 
tain-general of the Aragonese army and grand con- 
stable of the kingdom of Naples, hastened to win for 
himself favorable terms from the French sovereign. 
The Baglioni betook themselves to their own ran- 
cors in Perugia. The Duke of Calabria retreated. 
Italy seemed bent on proving that cowardice and 
selfishness and incapacity had conquered her. Vi- 
terbo was gained: the Ciminian heights were trav- 
ersed: the Campagna, bounded by the Alban and 
the Sabine hills, with Rome, a bluish cloud upon 
the lowlands of the Tiber, spread its solemn breadth 
of beauty at the invader's feet. Not a blow had been 
struck, when he reached the Porta del Popolo upon 
the 31st of December 1494. At three o'clock in the 
afternoon began the en^^v of the French army. It 



ENTRY INTO ROME. 565 

was nine at night before the last soldiers, under the 
flaring light of torches and flambeaux, defiled through 
the gates, and took their quarters in the streets of the 
Eternal City. The gigantic barbarians of the cantons, 
flaunting with plumes and emblazoned surcoats, the 
chivalry of France, splendid with silk mantles and 
gilded corselets, the Scotch guard in their wild cos- 
tume of kilt and philibeg, the scythe-like halberds 
of the German lanz-knechts, the tangled elf-locks 
of stern-featured Bretons, stamped an ineffaceable 
impression on the people of the South. On this 
memorable occasion, as in a show upon some hoi 
iday, marched past before them specimens and van 
guards of all those legioned races which were soon 
to be too well at home in every fair Italian dwelling- 
place. Nothing was wanting to complete the symbol 
of the coming doom but a representative of the grim, 
black, wiry infantry of Spain. 

The Borgia meanwhile crouched within the Cas- 
tle of S. Angelo. How would the Conqueror, now 
styled Flagellum Dei, deal with the abomination of 
desolation seated in the holy place of Christendom ? 
At the side of Charles were the Cardinals Ascanio 
Sforza and Giuliano della Rovere, urging him to 
summon a council and depose the Pope. But still 
closer to his ear was Brigonnet, the ci-devant trades- 
man, who thought it would become his dignity to 
wear a cardinal's hat On this trifle turned the 
destinies of Rome, the doom of Alexander, the fate 
of the Church. Charles determined to compromise 



566 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

matters. He demanded a few fortresses, a red hat foi 
Brigonnet, Cesare Borgia as a hostage for four months, 
and Djem, the brother of the Sultan.^ After these 
agreements had been made and ratified, Alexander 
ventured to leave his castle and receive the homage 
of the faithful. 

Charles staid a month in Rome, and then set out 
for Naples. The fourth and last scene in the Italian 
pageant was now to be displayed. After the rich 
plain and proud cities of Lombardy, beneath their 
rampart of perpetual snow; after the olive gardens 
and fair towns of Tuscany; after the great name of 
Rome; Naples, at length, between Vesuvius and 
the sea, that first station of the Greeks in Italy, 
world- famed for its legends of the Sibyl and the 
sirens and the sorcerer Virgil, received her king. 
The very names of Parthenope, Posilippo, Inarime, 
Sorrento, Capri, have their fascination. There too 
the orange and lemon groves are more luxuriant; 
the grapes yield sweeter and more intoxicating wine ; 
the villagers are more classically graceful; the vol- 
canic soil is more fertile ; the waves are bluer and 
the sun is brighter than elsewhere in the land. None 
of the conquerors of Italy have had the force to 
resist the allurements of the bay of Naples. The 



• See above, p. 416, for the history of this unfortunate prince. 
When Alexander ceded Djem, whom he held as a captive for the 
Sultan at a yearly revenue of 40,000 ducats, he was under engage- 
ments with Bajazet to murder him. Accordingly Djem died of slow 
poison soon after he became the guest of Charles. The Borgia pre- 
ferred to keep faith with the Turk. 



CHARLES AT NAPLES, 567 

Greeks lost their native energy upon these shores, 
and realized in the history of their colonies the myth 
of Ulysses' comrades in the gardens of Circe. Han- 
nibal was tamed by Capua. The Romans in their 
turn dreamed away their vigor at Baiae, at Pompeii, 
at Capreae, until the whole region became a byword 
for voluptuous living. Here the Saracens were sub- 
dued to mildness, and became physicians instead of 
pirates. Lombards and Normans alike were softeiied 
down, and lost their barbarous fierceness amid the 
enchantments of the southern sorceress. 

Naples was now destined to ruin for Charles 
whatever nerve yet remained to his festival army 
The witch too, while brewing for the French her 
most attractive potions, mixed with them a deadly 
poison — the virus of a fell disease, memorable in the 
annals of the modern world, which was destined to 
infect the nations of Europe from this center, and 
to proye more formidable to our cities than even the 
leprosy of the Middle Ages.^ 

The kingdom of Naples, through the frequent 

• Those who are curious to trace the history of the origin of syph- 
ilis, should study the article upon the subject in Von Hirsch, Histor- 
isch-geographische Pathologie (Erlangen, i860), and in Rosenbaum 
Geschichte der Lustseuche im Alter thum (Halle, 1845). Some 
curious contemporary observations concerning the rapid diffuLion of 
the disease in Italy, its symptoms, and its cure, are contained iq 
Matarazzo's Cronaca di Perugia {Arch. Stor. It. vol. xvi. part ii 
pp. 32-36), and in Portovenere {Arch. St. vol. vi. pt. ii. p. 338). The 
celebrated poem of Fracastorius deserves to be read both for its fine 
Latinity and for its information. One of the earliest works issued 
from the Aldine press in 1497 was the Libellus de Epidemic quci?H 
vulgo morbum Gallicum vacant. It was written by Nicolai^ Leo- 
niceno, and dedicated to the Count Francesco de la Miraadola, 



50b RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

uncertainty which attended the succession to the 
throne, as well as the suzerainty assumed and mis- 
used by the Popes, had been for centuries a standing 
cause of discord in Italy. The dynasty which Charles 
now hoped to dispossess was Spanish. After the 
death of Joanna II. in 1435, Alfonso, King of Aragon 
and Sicily, who had no claim to the crown beyond 
what he derived through a bastard branch of the old 
Norman dynasty, conquered Naples, expelled Count 
Rene of Anjou, and established himself in this new 
kingdom, which he preferred to those he had in- 
herited by right. Alfonso, surnamed the Magnani- 
mous, was one of the most brilliant and romantic 
personages of the fifteenth century. Historians are 
never weary of relating his victories over Caldora 
and Francesco Sforza, the coup-de-main by which he 
expelled his rival Rene, and the fascination which 
he exercised in Milan, while a captive, over the 
jealous spirit of Filippo Maria Vlsconti.^ Scholars 
are no less profuse in their praises of his virtues, the 
justice, humanity, religion, generosity, and culture 
which rendered him pre-eminent among the princes 



> Mach. 1st. Fior, lib. v. cap. 5. Corio, pp. 332, 333, may be con- 
sulted upon the difficulties which Alfonso overcame at the commence- 
ment of his conquest. Defeated by the Genoese near the Isle of 
Ponza, and carried a prisoner to Milan, he succeeded in proving to 
Filippo Visconti that it was more to his interest to have him king of 
Naples than to keep the French there. Upon this the Duke of Milan 
restored him with honor to his throne, and confirmed him in the con- 
quest which before he had successfully opposed. It is a singular in- 
stance of the extent to which Italian princes were controlled by policy 
xnd reason. 



ALFONSO THE MAGNANIMOUS, 569 

o^ that splendid period.^ His love of learning was 
a passion. Whether at home in the retirement of 
his palace, or in his tent during war, he was always 
attended by students, who read aloud and commented 
on Livy, Seneca, or the Bible. No prince was more 
profuse in his presents to learned men. Bartolommeo 
Fazio received 5oo ducats a year for the composition 
of his histories, and when, at their conclusion, the 
scholar asked for a further gift of 200 or 300 florins, 
the prince bestowed upon him i,5oo. The year he 
died, Alfonso distributed 20,000 ducats to men of 
letters alone. This immoderate liberality is the only 
vice of which he is accused. It bore its usual fruits 
in the disorganization of finance: 

The generous humanity of Alfonso endeared him 
greatly to the Neapolitans. During the half-century 
in which so many Italian princes succumbed to the 
dagger of their subjects, he, in Naples, where, ac- 
cording to Pontano, ' nothing was cheaper than the 
life of a man,' walked up and down unarmed and 
unattended. 'Why should a father fear among his 
children ? ' he was wont to say in answer to sug- 
gestions of the danger of this want of caution. The 
many splendid qualities by which he was distin- 
guished were enhanced rather than obscured by the 
romance of his private life. Married to Margaret of 



1 Vespasiano's Life of Alfonso ( Vite di Uomini Illustri, pp. 48-72) 
is a model of agreeable composition and vivid delineation. It is writ- 
ten of course from the scholar's more than the politician's point of 
view. Compare with it Giovio, Elogia, and Pontanus, de Liberalitatt. 



570 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

Castile, he had no legitimate children; Ferdinand, 
with whom he shared the government of Naples 
in 1443, and whom he designated as his successor 
in 1458, was supposed to be his son by Margaret 
de Hijar. It was even whispered that this Ferdi- 
nand was the child of Catherine the wife of Alfonso's 
brother Henry, whom Margaret, to save the honor 
of the king, acknowledged as her own. Whatever 
may have been the truth of this dark history, it was 
known for certain that the queen had murdered her 
rival, the unhappy Margaret de Hijar, and that 
Alfonso never forgave her or would look upon her 
from that day. Pontano, who was Ferdinand's sec- 
retary, told a different tale. He affirmed that the 
real father of the Duke of Calabria was a Marrano 
of Valentia. This last story is rendered probable by 
the brusque contrast between the character of Al- 
fonso and that of Ferdinand. 

It would be terrible to think that such a father 
could have b(^>en the parent of such a son. In Fer- 
dinand the instinct of liberal culture degenerated into 
vulgar magnificence ; courtesy and confidence gave 
place to cold suspicion and brutal cruelty. His feroc- 
ity bordered upon madness. He used to keep the 
victims of hiu hatred in cages, where their misery af- 
forded him the same delight as some men derived 
from watching the antics of monkeys.^ In his hunt- 



» See Pontanus, de hnmanitate, Aldus, 1518, vol. i. p. 318: • Fer- 
dinandus Kex Neapolitanorum prasclaros etiam viros conclusos car- 
cere etiaxn bene atque abunde pascebat, eandem ex lis voluptatem 



FERDINAND OF A RAG ON. 57 1 

ing establishment were repeated the worst atrocities 
of Bernabo Visconti : wretches mutilated for neglect 
of his hounds extended their handless stumps for char- 
ity to the travelers through his villages.^ Instead of 
the generosity for which Alfonso had been famous, 
Ferdinand developed all the arts of avarice. Like 
Sixtus IV. he made the sale of corn and oil a royal 
monopoly, trafficking in the hunger of his subjects.*^ 
Like Alexander VI. he fattened his viziers and secre- 
taries upon the profits of extortion which he shared 
with them, and when they were fully gorged he cut 
their throats and proclaimed himself the heir through 
their attainder.^ Alfonso had been famous for his 
candor and sincerity. Ferdinand was a demon of 
dissimulation and treachery. His murder of his guest 
Jacopo Piccinino at the end of a festival, which ex- 
tended over twenty-seven days of varied entertain- 
ments, won him the applause of Machiavellian spirits 

capiens quam pueri e conclusis in cavei aviculis: qua de re saepe- 
numero sibi ipsi inter intimos suos diu multumque gratulatus sub- 
blanditusque in risum tandem ac cachinnos profundebaturr' 

' See Pontanus, de Immanitate, Aldus. 1518, vol. i. p. 320: ' Ferd. 
R. N. qui cervum aprumve occidissent furtimve palamve, alios remo 
a(ldi>Mt, alios manibus mutilavit, alios suspendio affecit: agros quoque 
serendos inderdixit dominis, legendasque aut glandes aut poma, qu;^ 
servari quidem volebat in escam feris ad venationis suae usum.' 

« Caracciolo, de Varietate Fortujice, Muratori, vol. xxii. p. 87, ex- 
poses this system in a passage which should be compared with Infes- 
sura on the practices of Sixtus. De Comines, lib. vii. cap. 11, may be 
read with profit on the same subject. 

3 See Caracciolo, loc. cit. pp. 88, 89, concerning the judicial mur- 
der of Francesco Coppola and Antonello Perucci, both of whom had 
been raised to eminence by Ferdinand, used through their lives as 
the instruments of his extortion, and murdered by him in their rich 
old age. 



572 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

throughout Italy.' It realized the Ideal of treason con- 
ceived as a line art. Not less perfect as a specimen 
of diabolical cunning was the vengeance which Fer- 
dinand, counseled by his son Alfonso, inflicted on the 
barons who conspired against hlm.^ Alfonso was a 
son worthy of his terrible father. The only difference 
between them was that Ferdinand dissembled, while 
Alfonso, whose bravery at Otranto against the Turks 
had surrounded him with military glory, abandoned 
himself with cynicism to his passions. Sketching 
characters of both in the same paragraph, de Comlnes 
writes : ' Never was man more cruel than Alfonso, nor 
more vicious, nor more wicked, nor more poisonous, 
nor more gluttonous. His father was more danger 
ous, because he could conceal his mind and even his 
anger from sight ; In the midst of festivity he would 
take and slaughter his victims by treachery. Grace 
or mercy was never found in him, nor yet compassion 
for his poor people. Both of them laid forcible hands 
on women. In matters of the Church they observed 
nor reverence nor obedience. They sold bishoprics, 
like that of Tarento, which Ferdinand disposed of for 
13,000 ducats to a Jew in favor of his son whom he 
called a Christian.* 

This kind of tyranny carried in itself its own death- 
warrant. It needed not the voice of Savonarola to 

• See De Comines, lib. vii. cap. 1 1 ; Sismondi, vol. vii. p. 229. Read 
also the short account of the massacre of the Barons given in the 
Chronicon Venetum, Muratori, xxiv. p. 15, where the intense loath- 
ing felt throughout Italy for Ferdinand and his son Alfonso is pow- 
erfully expressed. 



ALFONSO II. ABDICATES. 573 

proclaim that God would revenge the crimes of Fer- 
dinand by placing a new sovereign on his throne. It 
was commonly believed that the old king died in 1494 
of remorse and apprehension, when he knew that the 
French expedition could no longer be delayed. Al- 
fonso, for his part, bold general in the field and able 
man of affairs as he might be, found no courage to 
resist the conqueror. It is no fiction of a poet or a 
moralist, but plain fact of history, that this King of 
Naples, grandson of the great Alfonso and father of 
the Ferdinand to be, quailed before the myriads of ac- 
cusing dead that rose to haunt his tortured fancy in 
the supreme hour of peril. The chambers of his pal- 
ace in Naples were thronged with ghosts by battal- 
ions, pale specters of the thousands he had reduced to 
starvation, bloody phantoms of the barons he had 
murdered after nameless tortures, thin wraiths of those 
who had wasted away in dungeons under his remorse- 
less rule. The people around his gates muttered in 
rebellion. He abdicated in favor of his son, took ship 
for Sicily, and died there conscience-stricken in a con- 
vent ere the year was out. 

Ferdinand, a brave youth, beloved by the nation 
in spite of his father's and grandfather's tyranny, 
reigned in his stead. Yet even for him the situation 
was untenable. Everywhere he was beset by traitors 
— by his whole army at San Germano, by Trivulzi at 
Capua, by the German guide at Naples. Without 
soldiers, without allies, with nothing to rely upon but 
the untried goodwill of subjects who had just reason 



574 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

to execrate his race, and with the conquerors of Italy 
advancing daily through his states, retreat alone was 
left to him. After abandoning his castles to pillage, 
burning the ships in the harbor of Naples, and setting 
Don Federigo together with the Queen dowager and 
the princess Joanna upon a quick-sailing galley, Fer- 
dinand bade farewell to his kingdom. Historians re- 
late that as the shore receded from his view he kept 
intoning in a loud voice this verse of the 127th Psalm: 
* Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman wak- 
eth but in vain.' Between the beach of Naples and 
the rocky shore of Ischia, for which the exiles were 
bound, there is only the distance of some seventeen 
miles. It was in February, a month of mild and mel- 
ancholy sunshine in those southern regions, when the 
whole bay of Naples with its belt of distant hills is 
wont to take one tint of modulated azure, that the 
royal fugitives performed this voyage. Over the 
sleeping sea they glided ; while from the galley's 
stern the king with a voice as sad as Boabdil's 
when he sat down to weep for Granada, cried: 
' Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman 
waketh but in vain.' 

There was no want of courage in the youth. By 
his simple presence he had intimidated a mob of rebels 
in Naples. By the firmness of his carriage he sub- 
dued the insolent governor of Ischia, and made him- 
self master of the island. There he waited till the 
storm was overpast. Ten times more a man than 
Charles, he watched the French king depart from 



THE FRENCH AT NAPLES, 575 

Naples leaving scarcely a rack behind — some troops 
decimated by disease and unnerved by debauchery, 
and a general or two without energy or vigor. Then 
he returned and entered on a career of greater popu- 
larity than could have been enjoyed by him if the 
French had never made the fickle race of Naples feel 
how far more odious is a foreign than a familiar yokeJ 
Charles entered Naples as a conqueror or liber- 
ator on February 22, 1495. He was welcomed and 
feted by the Neapolitans, than whom no people are 
more childishly delighted with a change of masters. 
He enjoyed his usual sports, and indulged in his 
usual love-affairs. With suicidal insolence and want 
of policy he alienated the sympathies of the noble 
families by dividing the titles, offices, and fiefs of 
the kingdom among his retinue.^ Without receiv- 
ing so much as a provisional investiture from the 
Pope, he satisfied his vanity by parading on May 
12 as sovereign, with a ball in one hand and a 
scepter in the other, through the city. Then he 
was forced to return upon his path and to seek 
France with the precipitancy he had shown in gain- 
ing Naples. Alexander, who was witty, said the 



» The misfortunes and the bravery of this young prince inspire a 
deep feeling of interest. It is sad to read that after recovering his 
kingdom in 1496, he died in his twenty-eighth year, worn out with 
fatigue and with the pleasures of his marriage to his aunt Joanna, 
whom he loved too passionately. His uncle Frederick, the brother 
ot Alfonso II., succeeded to the throne. Thus in three years Naples 
had five Sovereigns. 

• 'Tousestats et offices furent donnez aux Fran9ois, ^ deux ou 
•<ois/ says De Comines. 



570 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

French had conquered Italy with lumps of chalk 
and wooden spurs, because they rode unarmed in 
slippers and sent couriers before them to select their 
quarters. It remained to be seen that the achieve 
ments of this conquest could be effaced as easily as 
a chalk mark is rubbed out, or a pair of wooden 
spurs are broken. 

While Charles was amusing himself at Naples, a 
storm was gathering in his rear. A league against 
him had been formed in April by the great powers 
of Europe. Venice, alarmed for the independence 
of Italy, and urged by the Sultan, who had reason 
to dread Charles VIII.,^ headed the league. Lodo- 
vico, now that he had attained his selfish object 
in the quiet position of Milan, was anxious foi his 
safety. The Pope still feared a general council. 
Maximilian, who could not forget the slight put 
upon him in the matter of his daughter and his 
bride, was willing to co-operate against his rival. 
Ferdinand and Isabella, having secured themselves 
in Roussillon, thought it behooved them to re estab- 
lish Spaniards of their kith and kin in Naples. Each 
of the contracting parties had his role assigned to 
him. Spain undertook to aid Ferdinand of Aragon 
in Calabria. Venice was to attack the seaports of 



• Charles, by an act dated A. D. 1494, September 6, had bought 
the title of Emperor of Constantinople and Trebizond from Andrew 
Palaaologus (see Gibbon, vol. viii. p. 183, ed. Milman). When he 
took Djem from Alexander in Rome, his object was to make use of 
him in a war against Bajazet; and the Pope was always impressing 
on the Turk the peril of a Frankish crusade. 



LEAGUE AGAINST CHARLES. 577 

the kingdom; Lodovico Sforza, to occupy Asti; the 
King of the Romans, to make a diversion in the 
North. Florence alone, though deeply injured by 
Charles in the matter of Pisa, kept faith with the 
French. 

The danger was imminent. Already Ferdinand 
the Catholic had disembarked troops on the shore 
of Sicily, and was ready to throw an army into the 
ports of Reggio and Tropea. Alexander had refused 
to carry out his treaty by the surrender of Spoleto. 
Cesare Borgia had escaped from the French camp. 
The Lombards were menacing Asti, which the Duke 
of Orleans held, and without the possession of which 
there was no safe return to France. Asti indeed at 
this juncture would have fallen, and Charles would 
have been caught in a trap, if the Venetians had 
only been quick or wary enough to engage Ger- 
man mercenaries.^ The danger of the situation may 
best be judged by reading the Memoirs of De 
Comines, who was then ambassador at Venice. 
* The league was concluded very late one evening. 
The next morning the Signory sent for me earlier 
than usual. They were assembled in great numbers, 
perhaps a hundred or more, and held their heads 
high, made a good cheer, and had not the same 
countenance as on the day when they told me of 
the capture of the citadel of Naples.^ My heart 

> See De Comines, lib. vii. cap. 15, pp. 78, 79. 
» De Comines' account of the alarm felt at Venice on that occa- 
sion is very graphic: 'They sent for me one morning, and I found 



^78 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

was heavy, and I had grave doubts about the j per- 
son of the king and about all his company; and 
I thought their scheme more ripe than it really 
was, and feared they might have Germans ready: 
and if it had been so, never could the king have 
got safe out of Italy.' Nevertheless De Cc^mines 
put a brave face on the matter, and told the coun- 
cil that he had already received information of the 
league and had sent dispatches to his master on 
the subject.! ' After dinner,' continues De Comines, 
* all the ambassadors of the league met for an ex- 
cursion on the water, which is the chief recreation 
at Venice, where every one goes according to the 
retinue he keeps, or at the expense of the Signory. 
There may have been as many as forty gondolas, 
all bearing displayed the arms of their masters upon 
banners. I saw the whole of this company pass 
before my windows, and there were many min- 
strels on board. Those of Milan, one at least 
of them who had often kept my company, put 
on a brave face not to know me; and for three 
days I remained without going forth into the 
town, nor my people, nor was there all that time 



them to the number of fifty or sixty in the Doge's bedchamber, for he 
was ill of colic; and there he told me the news with a good counte- 
nance. But none of the company knew so well how to feign as he. 
Some were seated on a wooden bench, leaning their heads on their 
hands, and others otherwise; and all showed great heavines^ at heart. 
I think that when the news reached Rome of the battle of Cannae, the 
senators were not more confounded or frightened.* 

1 Bembo, in his Venetian History (lib. ii. p. 32), tells a different 
♦ale. He represents De Comines quite unnerved by the news. 



LIBERTIES OF PISA. 579 

a single courteous word said to me or to any of 
my suite.' 

Returning northward by the same route, Charles 
passed Rome and reached Siena on June 13. The 
Pope had taken refuge, first at Orvieto, and after- 
wards at Perugia, on his approach ; but he made no 
concessions. Charles could not obtain from him an 
investiture of the kingdom he pretended to have 
conquered, while he had himself to surrender the 
fortresses of Civita Vecchia and Terracina. Ostia 
alone remained in the clutch of Alexander's im- 
placable enemy, the Cardinal della Rovere. In 
Tuscany the Pisan question was again opened. 
The French army desired to' see the liberties of 
Pisa established on a solid basis before they quitted 
Italy. On their way to Naples the misfortunes of 
that ancient city had touched them: now on their 
return they were clamorous that Charles should guar- 
antee its freedom. But to secure this object was an 
affair of difficulty. The forces of the league had al- 
ready taken the field, and the Duke of Orleans was 
being besieged in No vara. The Florentines, jeal- 
ous of the favor shown, in manifest infringement 
of their rights, to citizens whom they regarded as 
rebellious bondsmen, assumed an attitude of menace. 
Charles could only reply with vague promises to the 
solicitations of the Pisans, strengthen the French 
garrisons in their fortresses, and march forward as 
quickly as possible into the Apennines. The key 
of the pass by which he sought to regain Lombardy 



580 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

is the town of Pontremoli. Leaving that in ashes 
on June 29, the French army, distressed for provis- 
ions and in peril among those melancholy hills, 
pushed onward with all speed. They knew that 
the allied forces, commanded by the Marquis of 
Mantua, were waiting for them at the other side 
upon the Taro, near the village of Fornovo. Here, 
if anywhere, the French ought to have been crushed. 
They numbered about 9,000 men in all, while the 
allies were close upon 40,000. The French were 
weary with long marches, insufficient food, and bad 
lodgings. The Italians were fresh and well cared 
for. Yet in spite of all this, in spite of blind gen- 
eralship and total blundering, Charles continued to 
play his part of fortune's favorite to the end. A 
bloody battle, which lasted for an hour, took place 
upon the banks of the Taro.^ The Italians suffered 
so severely that, though they still far outnumbered 
the French, no persuasions could make them rail} 
and renew the fight. Charles in his own person 

> The action at Foraovo lasted a quarter of an hour, according 
to De Comines. The pursuit of the Italians occupied about three 
quarters of an hour more. Unaccustomed to the quick tactics of the 
French, the Italians, when once broken, persisted in retreating upon 
Reggio and Parma. The Gonzaghi alone distinguished themselves 
for obstinate courage, and lost four or five menrbers of their princely 
house. The Stradiots, whose scimitars ought to have dealt rudely 
with the heavy French men-at-arms, employed their time in pillag- 
ing the Royal pavilion, very wisely abandoned to their avarice by the 
French captains. To such an extent were military affairs miscon- 
strued in Italy, that, on the strength of this brigandage, tht Vene- 
tians claimed Fornovo for a victory. See my essay ' Fornovo,' in 
Sketches and Studies in Italy, for a description of the ground on 
which the battle was fought. 



RETREAT UPON A STL 58 1 

ran great peril during this battle; and when it 
was over, he had still to effect his retreat upon 
Asti in the teeth of a formidable army. The good 
luck of the French and the dilatory cowardice of 
their opponents saved them now again for the 
last time. 

On July 1 5, Charles at the head of his little force 
marched into Asti and was practically safe. Here 
the young king continued to give signal proofs of 
his weakness. Though he knew that the Duke 
of Orleans was hard pressed in Novara, he made 
no effort to relieve him; nor did he attempt to 
use the 20,000 Switzers who descended from their 
Alps to aid him in the struggle with the league. 
From Asti he removed to Turin, where he spent 
his time in flirting with Anna Soleri, the daughter 
of his host. This girl had been sent to harangue 
him with a set oration, and had fulfilled her task, 
in the words of an old witness, * without wavering, 
coughing, spitting, or giving way at all.' Her charms 
delayed the king in Italy until October 19, when he 
signed a treaty at Vercelli with the Duke of Milan. 
At this moment Charles might have held Italy in his 
grasp. His forces, strengthened by the unexpected 
arrival of so many Switzers, and by a junction with 
the Duke of Orleans, would have been sufficient to 
overwhelm the army of the league, and to intimidate 
the faction of Ferdinand in Naples. Yet so light- 
minded was Charles, and so impatient were his 
courtiers, that he now only cared for a quick re 



582 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY, 

turn to France. Reserving to himself the nominal 
right of using Genoa as a naval station, he resigned 
that town to Lodovico Sforza, and confirmed him 
in the tranquil possession of his Duchy. On Oc- 
tober 22 he left Turin, and entered his own domin- 
ions through the Alps of Dauphine. Already his 
famous conquest of Italy was reckoned among the 
wonders of the past, and his sovereignty over Na- 
ples had become the shadow of a name. He had 
obtained for himself nothing but momentary glory, 
while he imposed on France a perilous foreign pol- 
icy, and on Italy the burden of bloody warfare in 
the future. 

A little more than a year had elapsed between the 
first entry of Charles into Lombardy and his return to 
France. Like many other brilliant episodes of history, 
this conquest, so showy and so ephemeral, was more 
important as a sign than as an actual event. * His 
passage,' says Guicciardini, 'was the cause not only 
of change in states, downfalls of kingdoms, desola- 
tions of whole districts, destructions of cities, barbar- 
ous butcheries; but also of new customs, new modes 
of conduct, new and bloody habits of war, diseases 
hitherto unknown. The organization upon which the 
peace and harmony of Italy depended was so upset 
that, since that time, other foreign nations and barbar- 
ous armies have been able to trample her under foot 
and to ravage her at pleasure.' The only error of Guic- 
ciardini is the assumption that the holiday excursion 
-jf Charles VIII. was in any deep sense the caus^: of 



RESULTS OF THE INVASI017, 583 

these calamities.^ In truth the French invasion opened 
a new era for the Italians, but only in the same sense as 
a pageant may form the prelude to a tragedy. Every 
monarch of Europe, dazzled by the splendid display of 
Charles and forgetful of its insignificant results, began 
to look with greedy eyes upon the wealth of the pen- 
insula. The Swiss found in those rich provinces an 
inexhaustible field for depredation. The Germans, 
under the pretense of religious zeal, gave a loose rein 
to their animal appetites in the metropolis of Christen- 
dom. France and Spain engaged in a duel to the 
death for the possession of so fair a prey. The French, 
maddened by mere cupidity, threw away those chances 
which the goodwill of the race at large afforded them.^ 



> Guicciardini's Dialogo del Feggimento dt Firenze {Op. Ined. 
vol. ii. p. 94) sets forth the state of internal anarchy and external vio- 
lence which followed the departure of Charles VIII., with wonderful 
acuteness. ' Se per sorte 1' uno Oltramontano caccer^ 1' altro, Italia 
resterk in estrema servitCi,' is an exact prophecy of what happened 
oefore the end of the sixteenth century, when Spain had beaten 
France in the duel for Italy. 

« Matarazzo, in his Cronaca della Cittd di Perugia {Arch. Sf., 
vol. xvi. part 2, p. 23), gives a lively picture of the eagerness with 
which the French were greeted in 1495, and of the wanton brutality 
by which they soon alienated the people. In this he agrees almost 
textually with De Comines, who writes: ' Le peuple nous advouoit 
comme Saincts, estimans en nous toute foy et bont^; mais ce propos 
ne leur dura gueres, tant pour nostre desordre et pillerie, et qu'aussi 
les enremis oppreschoient le peuple en tous quartiers,' etc., lib. vii. 
cap, 6. In the first paragraph of the Ckromcon Venettnn {Muratori, 
vol. xxiv. p. 5), we read concerning the advent of Charles: ' I popoli 
tutti dicevano Benedictus qui ve?iit m nomine Domini. N^ v'era 
alcuno che li potesse contrastare, n$ resistere, tanto era da tutti i 
popoli Italiani chiamato.' The Florentines, as burghers of a Guelt 
city, were always loyal to the French. Besides, their commerce with 
France {e,g, the wealth of Filippo Strozzi) made it to their interest 



584 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

Louis XII. lost himself in petty intrigues, by which 
he finally weakened his own cause to the profit of 
the Borgias and Austria. Francis I. foamed his force 
away like a spent wave at Marignano and Pavia. 
The real conqueror of Italy was Charles V. Italy in 
the sixteenth century was destined to receive the im- 
press of the Spanish spirit, and to bear the yoke ot 
Austrian dukes. Hand in hand with political despot- 
ism marched religious tyranny. The Counter- Refor- 
mation over which the Inquisition presided, was part 
and parcel of the Spanish policy for the enslavement 
of the nation no less than for the restoration of the 
Church. Meanwhile the weakness, discord, egotism, 
and corruption which prevented the Italians from re- 
sisting the French invasion in 1494, continued to in- 
crease. Instead of being lessoned by experience, 
Popes, Princes, and Republics vied with each other 
in calling in the strangers, pitting Spaniard against 
Frenchman, and paying the Germans to expel the 
Swiss, oblivious that each new army of foreigners 
they summoned was in reality a new swarm of de- 
vouring locusts. In the midst of this anarchy it is 
laughable to hear the shrill voice of priests, like 
Julius and Leo, proclaiming before God their vows to 
rid Italy of the barbarians. The confusion was ten- 
fold confounded when the old factions of Guelf and 

to favor the cause of the French. See Guicc. i. 2, p. 62. This loy- 
alty rose to enthusiasm under the influence of Savonarola, survived 
the stupidities of Charles VIII. and Louis XII., and committed the 
Florentines in 1528 to the perilous policy of expecting aid from 
Francis I. 



i 



THE REVELATION OF ITALY, 585 

Ghibelline put on a new garb of French and Spanish 
partisanship. Town fought with town and family with 
fanlily, in the cause of strangers whom they ought to 
have resisted with one will and steady hatred. The 
fascination of fear and the love of novelty alike 
swayed the fickle population of Italian cities. The 
foreign soldiers who inflicted on the nation such 
cruel injuries made a grand show in their streets, 
and there will always be a mob so childish as to 
covet pageants at the expense of freedom and even 
of safety. 

In spite of its transitory character the invasion of 
Charles VIII., therefore, was a great fact in the his- 
tory of the Renaissance. It was, to use the preg- 
nant phrase of Michelet, no less than the revelation 
of Italy to the nations of the North. Like a gale 
sweeping across a forest of trees in blossom, and 
bearing their fertilizing pollen, after it has broken 
and deflowered their branches, to far-distant trees 
that hitherto have bloomed in barrenness, the storm 
of Charles's army carried far and wide through 
Europe thought-dust, imperceptible, but potent to 
enrich the nations. The French alone, says Michelet, 
understood Italy. How terrible would have been a 
conquest by Turks with their barbarism, of Spaniards 
with their Inquisition, of Germans with their brutal- 
ity! But France, impressible, sympathetic, ardent 
for pleasure, generous, amiable and vain, was capa- 
ble of comprehending the Italian spirit. From the 
Italians the French communicated to the rest of 



586 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 

Europe what we call the movement of the Renais- 
sance. There is some truth in this panegyric of 
Michelet*s. The passage of the army of Charles 
VIII. marks a turning-point in modern history, and 
from this epoch dates the diffusion of a spirit of cul- 
ture over Europe. But Michelet forgets to notice that 
the French never rightly understood their vocation 
with regard to Italy. They had it in their power to 
foster that free spirit which might have made her a 
nation capable, in concert with France, of resisting 
Charles V. Instead of doing so, they pursued the 
pettiest policy of avarice and egotism. Nor did they 
prevent that Spanish conquest the horrors of which 
their historian has so eloquently described. Again, 
we must remember that it was the Spaniards and not 
the French who saved Italy from being barbarized by 
the Turk. 

For the historian of Italy it is sad and humiliat- 
ing to have to acknowledge that her fate depended 
wholly on the action of more powerful nations, that 
she lay inert and helpless at the discretion of the 
conqueror in the duels between Spain and France 
and Spain and Islam. Yet this is the truth. It 
would seem that those peoples to whom we chiefly 
owe advance in art and knowledge, are often thus 
the captives of their intellectual inferiors. Their 
spiritual ascendency is purchased at the expense of 
political solidity and national prosperity. This was 
the case with Greece, with Judah, and with Italy. 
The civilization of the Italians, far in advance of that 



I 



FOREIGN ENSLAVEMENT. 587 

of Other European nations, unnerved theni in the 
conflict with robust barbarian races. Letters and 
the arts and the civilities of life were their glory, 
'Indolent princes and most despicable arms' were 
their ruin. Whether the Renaissance of the modern 
world would not have been yet more brilliant if Italy 
had remained free, who shall say? The very condi- 
tions which produced her culture seem to have ren- 
dered that impossible. 



APPENDICES. 
APPENDIX I. 

Blood-madness, See Chapter iii. p. 109. 

One of the most striking instances afforded by history 
of Haematomania in a tyrant is Ibrahim ibn Ahmed, 
prince of Africa and Sicily (a.d. 875). This man, be- 
sides displaying peculiar ferocity in his treatment of 
enemies and prisoners of war, delighted in the execu- 
tion of horrible butcheries within the walls of his own 
palace. His astrologers having once predicted that he 
should die by the hands of a * small assassin,' he killed 
off the whole retinue of his pages, and filled up their 
places with a suit of negroes whom he proceeded to 
treat after the same fashion. On another occasion, when 
one of his three hundred eunuchs had by chance been 
witness of the tyrant's drunkenness, Ibrahim slaughtered 
the whole band. Again, he is said to have put an end 
to sixty youths, originally selected for his pleasures, 
burning them by gangs of five or six in the furnace, 
or suffocating them in the hot chambers of his baths. 
Eight of his brothers were murdered in his presence; 
and when one, who was so diseased that he could 
scarcely stir, implored to be allowed to end his days 
in peace, Ibrahim answered: ' I make no exceptions.' His 
own son Abul-Aghlab was beheaded by his orders be- 
ibrc his eyes; and the execution of chamberlains, secre- 



590 APPENDIX L 

taries, ministers/ and courtiers was of common occur- 
rence. But his fiercest fury was directed against women. 
He seems to have been darkly jealous of the perpetua- 
tion of the human race. Wives and concubines were 
strangled, sawn asunder, and buried alive, if they showed 
signs of pregnancy. His female children were murdered 
as soon as they saw the light; sixteen of them, whom 
his mother mana^d to conceal and rear at her own 
peril, were massacred upon the spot when Ibrahim dis- 
covered whom they claimed as father. Contemporary 
Arab chroniclers, pondering upon the fierce and gloomy 
passions of this man, arrived at the conclusion that he 
was the subject of a strange disease, a portentous se- 
cretion of black bile producing the melancholy which 
impelled him to atrocious crimes. Nor does the prin- 
ciple on which this diagnosis of his case was founded 
appear unreasonable. Ibrahim was a great general, an 
able ruler, a man of firm and steady purpose; not a weak 
and ineffectual libertine whom lust for blood and lechery 
had placed below the level of brute beasts. When the 
time for his abdication arrived, he threw aside his mantle 
of state and donned the mean garb of an Arab devotee, 
preached a crusade, and led an army into Italy, where 
he died of dysentery before the city of Cosenza. The 
only way of explaining his eccentric thirst for slaughter 
is to suppose that it was a dark monomania, a form of 
psychopathy analogous to that which we find in the 
Mar^chal de Retz and the Marquise de Brinvilliers. 
One of the most marked symptoms of this disease was 
the curiosity which led him to explore the entrails 
of his victims, and to feast his eyes upon their quivering 
hearts. After causing his first minister Ibn-Semsama 
to be beaten to death, he cut his body open, and 
with his own knife sliced the brave man's heart. On 



APPENDIX I. 59. 

another occasion he had 500 prisoners brought before 
him. Seizing a sharp lance he first explored the region 
of the ribs, and then plunged the spear-point into the 
heart of each victim in succession. A garland of these 
hearts was made and hung up on the gate of Tunis. The 
Arabs regarded the heart as the seat of thought in 
man, the throne of the will, the center of intellectual 
existence. In this preoccupation with the hearts of his 
victims we may therefore trace the jealousy of hu- 
man life which Ibrahim displayed in his murder of 
pregnant women, as well as a tyrant's fury against the 
organ which had sustained his foes in their resistance. 
We can only comprehend the combination of sanguinary 
lust with Ibrahim's vigorous conduct of civil and military 
affairs, on the hypothesis that this man-tiger, as Amari, 
to whom I owe these details, calls him, was possessed 
with a specific madness. ;:^^vit^ai fr><u s '^ ^^ 



APPENDIX II. 

Nardij IsiorU di Firmzty lib, i. cap, 4, See Chap. iv. p. 195. 

After the freedom regained by the expulsion of the 
Duke of Athens and the humbling of the nobles, regu- 
larity for the future in the government might have been 
expected, since a very great equality among the burgh- 
ers had been established in consequence of those troubles. 
The city too had been divided into quarters, and the su- 
preme magistracy of the republic assigned to the eight 
priors, called Signori Priori di libertd, together with the 
Gonfalonier of Justice. The eight priors were chosen, two 
for each quarter; the Gonfalonier, their chief, differed in 
no respect from his colleagues save in precedence of dig- 
nity; and as the fourth part of the honors pertained to the 
members of the lesser arts, their turn kept coming round 
to that quarter to which the Gonfalonier belonged. This 
magistracy remained for two whole months, always liv- 
ing and sleeping in the Palace; in order that, according 
to the notion of our ancestors, they might be able to at- 
tend with greater diligence to the affairs of the common- 
wealth, in concert with their colleagues, who were the 
sixteen gonfaloniers of the companies of the people, and 
the twelve buoni uomini, or special advisers of the Sig- 
nory. These magistrates collectively in one body were 
called the College, or else the Signory and the Col- 
leagues. After this magistracy came the Senate, the 
number of which varied, and the name of which was al- 
tered several times up to the year 1494, according to cir- 
cumstances. The larger councils, whose business it was 



APPENDIX 11. 593 

to discuss and make the laws and all provisions both gen- 
eral and particular, were until that date two; the one 
called the Council of the people, formed only by the cit- 
tadini popolani, and the other the Council of the Com- 
mune, because it embraced both nobles and plebeians 
from the date of the formation of these councils.* The 
appointment of the magistrates, which of old times and 
under the best and most equitable governments was made 
on the occasion of each election, in this more modern 
period was consigned to a special council called Squit- 
tino? The mode and act of the election was termed 
Squittinare, which is equivalent to Scrutinium in the 
Latin tongue, because minute investigation was made 
into the qualities of the eligible burghers. This method, 
however, tended greatly to corrupt the good manners of 
the city, inasmuch as, the said scrutiny being made every 
three or five years, and not on each occasion, as would 
have been right, considering the present quality of the 
burghers and the badness of the times, those who had 
once obtained their nomination and been put into the 
purses thereto appointed, being certain to arrive some 
time at the honors and offices for which they were de- 
signed, became careless and negligent of good customs in 
their lives. The proper function of the Gonfaloniers was, 
in concert with their Gonfalons and companies, to defend 
with arms the city from perils foreign and civil, when 
occasion rose, and to control the fire-guards specially 
deputed by that magistracy in four convenient stations. 
All the laws and provisions, as well private as public, pro- 
posed by the Signory, had to be approved and carried by 
that College, then by the Senate, and lastly by the Coun- 

» Lorenzo de* Medici superseded these two councils by the Coun* 
cil of the Seventy, without, however, suppressing them. 
• A corruption of Scrutinio. 



^94 APPENDIX II. 

cils nained above. Notwithstanding this rule, everything 
of high irr.portance pertaining to the state was discussed 
and carried into execution during the whole time that the 
Medici administered the city by the Council vulgarly 
railed Balia, composed of men devoted to that govern- 
ment. While the Medici held sway, the magistracy of 
the Died delta Guerra or of Liberty and Peace were su- 
perseded by the Otto della Pratica in the conduct of all 
that concerned wars, truces, and treaties of peace, in obe- 
dience to the will of the chief agents of that government. 
The Otto di guardia e balia were then as now delegated 
\o criminal business, but they were appointed by the fore- 
named Council of Balia, or rather such authority and 
commission was assigned them by the Signory, and this 
usage was afterwards continued on their entry into office. 
Let this suffice upon these matters. Now the burghers 
vvho have the right of discussing and determining the af- 
fairs of the republic were and still are called privileged, 
beneficiati or statuali, of that quality and condition to 
which, according to the laws of our city, the government 
belongs; in other words they are eligible for office, as dis- 
tinguished from those who have not this privilege. Con- 
sequently the benefiziati and statuali of Florence corre- 
spond to the gentiluomini of Venice. Of these burghers 
there were about 400 families or houses, but at different 
times the number was larger, and before the plague of 
ij^27 they made up a total of about 4,000 citizens eligible 
for the Consiglio Grande. During the period of freedom 
between 1494 and 15 12 the other or nonprivileged citizens 
could be elevated to this rank of enfranchisement accord- 
ing as they were judged worthy by the Council : at the 
present time they gain the same distinction by such mer- 
its as may be pleasing to the ruler of the city for the time 
being: our commonwealth from the year 1433 having 



APPENDIX II. 



595 



been governed according to the will of its own citizens, 
though one faction has from time to time prevailed over 
another, and though before that date the republic was 
distressed and shaken by the divisions which affected the 
whole of Italy, and by many others which are rather to 
be reckoned as sedition peculiar and natural to free cities. 
Seeing that men by good and evil arts in combination are 
always striving to attain the summit of human affairs, to> 
gether also with the favor of fortune, who ever insists on 
having her part in our actions. 

Varchi : Storia Fiorentinaj lib. in. caps. 20y 21 ^ 22. 

\^The whole city of Florence is divided into four quarters, 
the first of which takes in the whole of that part which 
is now called Beyond the Arno, and the chief church of 
ihe district gives it the name of Santo Spirito. The other 
three, which embrace all that is called This side the 
Arno, also take their names from their chief churches, 
and are the Quarters of Sta. Croce, Sta. Maria Novella, 
and San Giovanni. Each of these four quarters is divided 
into foar gonfalons, named after the different animals or 
other things they carry painted on their ensigns. The 
quarter of Santo Spirito includes the gonfalons of the 
Ladder, the Shell, the Whip, and the Dragon; that of 
Santa Croce, the Car, the Ox, the Golden Lion, and the 
Wheels; that of Santa Maria Novella, the Viper, the 
Unicorn, the Red Lion, and the White Lion; that of San 
Giovanni, the Black Lion, the Dragon, the Keys, and 
the Vair. Now all the households and families of Flor- 
ence are included and classified under these four quarters 
and sixteen gonfalons, so that there is no burgher of 
Florence who does not rank in one of the four quarters 
and one of the sixteen gonfalons. Each gonfalon had its 



596 APPENDIX 11. 

standard-bearer, who carried the standard like captains 
of bands; and their chief office was to run with arms 
whenever they were called by the Gonfalonier of Justice, 
and to defend, each under his own ensign, the palace of 
he Signory, and to fight for the people's liberty; where- 
>re they were called Gonfaloniers of the companies of 
the people, or, more briefly, from their number, the Six- 
teen. Now since they never assembled by themselves 
alone, seeing that they could not propose or carry any 
measure without the Signory, they were also called the 
Colleagues, that is, the companions of the Signory, and 
their title was venerable. This, after the Signory, was 
the first and most honorable magistracy of Florence; and 
after them came the Twelve Buonuomini, also called, for 
the like reason. Colleagues. So the Signory with the 
Gonfalonier of Justice, the Sixteen, and the Twelve were 
called the Three Greater. No man was said to have the 
franchise {aver lo statd)^ and in consequence to frequent 
the council, or to exercise any office, whose grandfather 
or father had not occupied or been passed for {seduto o 
veduto) one of these three magistracies. To be passed 
{vedutd) Gonfalonier or Colleague meant this: when a 
man's name was drawn from the purse of the Gonfalo- 
niers or of the College to exercise the office of Gonfal- 
onier or Colleague, but by reason of being below the 
legal age, or for some other cause, he never sat himself 
upon the Board or was in fact Gonfalonier or Colleague, 
he was then said to have been passed; and this held good 
of all the other magistracies of the city. 

\ It should also be known that all the Florentine 
burghers were obliged to rank in one of the twenty- 
one arts : that is, no one could be a burgher of Flor- 
ence unless he or his ancestors had been approved and 
matriculated in one of these arts, whether they practiced 



APPENDIX II. 597 

it or no. Without the proof of such matriculation he 
could not be drawn for any office, or exercise any mag- 
istracy, or even have his name put into the bags. The 
arts were these: i. Judges and Notaries (for the doctors 
of the law were styled of old in Florence Judges) ; Mer- 
chants, or the Arts of; ii. Calimala,* iii. Exchange, iv. 
Wool; Porta Santa Maria, or the Arts of; v. Silk; vi. 
Physicians and Apothecaries; vii. Furriers. The others 
were viii. Butchers, ix. Shoemakers, x. Blacksmiths, xi. 
Linen-drapers and Clothesmen, xii. Masters, or Masons, 
and Stone-cutters, xiii. Vintners, xiv. Innkeepers, xv. 
Oilsellers, Pork-butchers, and Rope-makers, xvi. Ho- 
siers, xvii. Armorers, xviii. Locksmiths, xix. Saddlers, xx. 
Carpenters, xxi. Bakers. The last fourteen were called 
Lesser Arts; whoever was enrolled or matriculated into 
one of these was said to rank with the lesser {andare per 
la minor e) ; and though there were in Florence many 
other trades than these, yet having no guild of their 
own they were associated to one or other of those that 
I have named. Each art had, as may still be seen, a 
house or mansion, large and noble, where they assem- 
bled, appointed officers, and gave account of debit and 
credit to all the members of the guild.' In processions 
and other public assemblies the heads (for so the chiefs 
of the several arts were called) had their place and pre- 
cedence in order. Moreover, these arts at first had each 
an ensign for the defense, on occasion, of liberty with 
arms. Their origin was when the people in 1282 over- 
came the nobles ifirandt)^ and passed the Ordinances of 



1 The name Calimala was given to a trade in cloth carried on at 
Florence by merchants who bought rough goods in France, Flanders, 
and England, and manufactured them into more delicate materials. 

* Marco Foscari, quoted lower down, estimates the property c-* 
Jie Arts at 2oo.ocx:> ducats. 



5q8 appendix II. 

Justice against them, whereby no nobleman could exer- 
cise any magistracy; so that such of the patricians as 
desired to be able to hold office had to enter the ranks 
of the people, as did many great houses of quality, and 
matriculate into one of the arts. Which thing, while it 
partly allayed the civil strife of Florence, almost wholly 
extinguished all noble feeling in the souls of the Flor- 
entines; and the power and haughtiness of the city were 
no less abated than the insolence and pride of the nobles, 
who since then have never lifted up their heads again. 
These arts, the greater as well as the lesser, have varied 
in numbers at different times; and often have not only 
been rivals, but even foes, among themselves; so much 
so that the lesser arts once got it passed that the Gon- 
falonier should be appointed only from their body. Yet 
after long dispute it was finally settled that the Gonfal- 
onier could not be chosen from the lesser, but that he 
should always rank with the greater, and that in all 
other offices and magistracies, the lesser should always 
have a fourth and no more. Consequently, of the eight 
Priors, two were always of the lesser; of the Twelve, 
three; of the Sixteen, four; and so on through all the 
magistracies. 

As a consequence from what has been said, it is easy 
to perceive that all the inhabitants of Florence (by in- 
habitants I mean those only who are really settled there, 
for of strangers, who are passing or sojourning a while, 
we need not here take any account) are of two sorts. 
The one class are liable to taxation in Florence, that is, 
they pay tithes of their goods and are inscribed upon the 
books of the Commune, and these are called contribu- 
tors. The others are not taxed nor inscribed upon the 
registers of the Commune, inasmuch as they do not pay 
the tithes or other ordinary imposts; and these are called 



APPENDIX II. 599 

non -contributors: who, seeing that they live by their 
hands, and carry on mechanical arts and the vilest 
trades, should be called plebeians; and though they have 
ruled Florence more than once, ought not even to en- 
tertain a thought about public affairs in a well-governed 
state. The contributors are of two sorts: for some, while 
they pay the taxes, do not enjoy the citizenship {i. e. can- 
not attend the council or take any office); either because 
none of their ancestors, and in particular their father or 
their grandfather, has sat or been passed for any of the 
three greater magistracies; or else because they have not 
had themselves submitted to the scrutiny,* or, if they 
have advanced so far, have not been approved and nom- 
inated for office. These are indeed entitled citizens: but 
he who knows what a citizen is really, knows also that, 
being unable to share either the honors or the advan- 
tages of the city, they are not truly citizens; therefore let 
us call them burghers, without franchise. Those again 
who pay taxes and enjoy the citizenship (whom we will 
therefore call enfranchised burghers) are in like manner 
of two kinds. The one class, inscribed and matriculated 
into one of the seven first arts, are said to rank with the 
greater; whence we may call them Burghers of the 
Greater: the others, inscribed and matriculated into 
the fourteen lesser arts, are said to rank with the lesser; 
whence we may call them Burghers of the Lesser. This 
distinction had the Romans, but not for the same reason. 

Varchi: Storia Fiorentina^ lib. ix, chs. 48 ^ 4g, 46. 

'As for natural abilities, I for my part cannot believe that 
any one either could or ought to doubt that the Floren- 

» For an explanation of Squittino and Squittinare, sec Nardi, 
p. 593 above. 



6oo APPENDIX II. 

tines, even if they do not excel all other nations, are at 
least inferior to none in those things to which they give 
their minds. In trade, whereon of a truth their city is 
founded, and wherein their industry is chiefly exercised, 
they ever have been and still are reckoned not less trusty 
and true than great and prudent : but besides trade, it is 
clear that the three most noble arts of painting, sculpt- 
ure, and architecture have reached that degree of supreme 
excellence in which we find them now, chiefly by the toil 
and by the skill of the Florentines, who have beautified 
and adorned not only their own city but also very many 
others, with great glory and no small profit to themselves 
and to their country. And, seeing that the fear of being 
held a flatterer should not prevent me from testifying to 
the truth, though this will turn to the highest fame and 
honor of my lords and patrons, I say that all Italy, nay 
the whole world, owes it solely to the judgment and the 
generosity of the Medici that Greek letters were not ex- 
tinguished to the great injury of the human race, and 
that Latin literature was restored to the incalculable 
profit of all men. 

I am wholly of opinion opposed to that of some, who, 
because the Florentines are merchants, hold them for 
neither noble nor high-spirited, but for tame and low.^ 

> Compare, however, Varchi, quoted above, p. 243. The Report 
of Marco Foscari, Relazioni Venete, series ii. vol. i. p. 9 et seq., con- 
tain'. a remarkable estimate of the Florentine character. He attrib- 
utes the timidity and weakness which he observes in the Florentines 
to their mercantile habits, and notices, precisely what Varchi heie 
observes with admiration: ' li primi che governano lo stato vanro 
alle loro botteghe di seta, e gittati li lembi del mantello sopra le 
Spalle, pongonsi alia caviglia e lavorano pubblicamente che ognuno 
li vede; ed i figliuoli loro stanno in bottega con li grembiuli dinanzi, 
c portano il sacco e le sporte alle maestre con la seta e fanno gli altri 
esercizi di bottega.' A strong aristocratic prejudice transpires in 
every line. This report was written early in 1527. The events erf 



APPENDIX 11, 602 

On the contrary, I have often wondered with myself how 
it could be that men who have been used from their child- 
hood upwards for a paltry profit to carry bales of wool 
and baskets of silk like porters, and to stand like slaves 
all day and great part of the night at the loom, could 
summon, when and where was need, such greatness of 
soul, such high and haughty thoughts, that they have 
wit and heart to say and do those many noble things we 
know of them. Pondering on the causes of which, I find 
none truer than this, that the Florentine climate, between 
the fine air of Arezzo and the thick air of Pisa, infuses 
into their breasts the temperament of which I spoke. 
And whoso shall well consider the nature and the ways 
of the Florentines, will find them born more apt to rule 
than to obey. Nor would it be easily believed how much 
was gained for the youth of Florence by the institution 
of the militia; for whereas many of the young men, heed- 
less of the commonwealth and careless of themselves, 
used to spend all the day in idleness, hanging about 
places of public resort, girding at one another, or talking 
scandal of the passers by, they immediately, like beasts 
by some benevolent Circe transformed again to men, 
gave all their heart and soul, regardless of peril or loss, 
to gaining fame and honor for themselves, and liberty 
and safety for their country. I do not by what I have 
been saying mean to deny that among the Florentines 
may be found men proud, ambitious, and greedy of gain; 
for vices will exist as long as human nature lasts: nay, 
rather, the ungrateful, the envious, the malicious, and 
the evil-minded among them are so in the highest de- 

the Siege must have surprised Marco Foscari. He notices among 
other things, as a source of weakness, the country villas which were 
all within a few months destroyed by their armies for the public 
good. 



6oa APPENDIX a. 

gree, just as the virtuous are supremely virtuous. It \n 
indeed a common proverb that Florentine brains have no 
mean either way: the fools are exceeding simple, and the 
wise exceeding prudent, 

^ Their mode of life is simple and frugal, but wonder- 
fully and incredibly clean and neat; and it may be said 
with truth that the artisans and handicraftsmen live at 
Florence even better than the citizens themselves: for 
whereas the former change from tavern to tavern, ac- 
cording as they find good wine, and only think of joyous 
living; the latter in their homes, with the frugality of 
merchants, who for the most part make but do not spend 
money, or with the moderation of orderly burghers, never 
exceed mediocrity. Nevertheless there are not wantmg 
families, who keep a splendid table and live like nobles, 
such as the Antinori, the Bartolini, the Tornabuoni, tne 
Pazzi, the Borgherini, the Gaddi, the Rucellai, and among 
the Salviati, Piero d' Alamanno and Alamanno d' Jacopo. 
and some others. At Florence every one is called by his 
proper name or his surname; and the common usage, un- 
less there be some marked distinction of rank or age, is 
to say thou and not you; only to knights, doctors, and 
prebendaries is the title of messere allowed; to doctors 
that of maestro^ to monks don^ and to friars padre. True. 
however, is it that since there was a Court at Florence. 
first that of Giulio, the Cardinal de' Medici, then that of 
the Cardinal of Cortona, which enjoyed more license than 
the former, the manners of the city have become more 
refined — or shall I say more corrupt ? 



APPENDIX III. 

The Character of Alexander VI., from Guicdardim s Storu 
Fiorentina, cap. 27. See Chap. vii. p. 412 above. 

So died Pope Alexander, at the height of glory i. id 
prosperity; about whom it must be known that he "W'as 
a man of the utmost power and of great judgment and 
spirit, as his actions and behavior showed. But as his 
first accession to the Papacy was foul and shameful, 
seeing he had bought with gold so high a station, in 
like manner his government disagreed not with this 
base foundation. There were in him, and in full meas- 
ure, all vices both of flesh and spirit; nor could there 
be imagined in the ordering of the Church a rule so bad 
but that he put it into working. He was most sensual 
toward both sexes, keeping publicly women and boys, 
but more especially toward women; and so far did he 
exceed all measure that public opinion judged he knew 
Madonna Lucrezia, his own daughter, toward whom he 
bore a most tender and boundless love. He was ex- 
ceedingly avaricious, not in keeping what he had ac- 
quired, but in getting new wealth: and where he saw a 
way toward drawing money, he had no respect whatever; 
in his days were sold as at auction all benefices, dispen- 
sations, pardons, bishoprics, cardinalships, and all court 
dignities: unto which matters he had appointed two or 
three men privy to his thought, exceeding prudent, who 
let them out to the highest bidder. He caused the 
death by poison of many cardinals and prelates, even 
among his intimates, those namely whom he noted to 



6o4 APPENDIX TIL 

be rich in benefices and understood to have hoarded 
much, with the view of seizing on their wealth. His 
cruelty was great, seeing that by his direction many 
were put to violent death; nor was the ingratitude less 
with which he caused the ruin of the Sforzeschi and 
Colonnesi, by whose favor he acquired the Papacy. 
There was in him no religion, no keeping of his troth: he 
promised all things liberally, but stood to nought but 
what was useful to himself: no care for justice, since in 
his days Rome was like a den of thieves and murderers: 
his ambition was boundless, and such that it grew in the 
same measure as his state increased: nevertheless, his 
sins meeting with no due punishment in this world, he 
was to the last of his days most prosperous. While 
young and still almost a boy, having Calixtus for his 
uncle, he was made Cardinal and then Vice-Chancellor: 
in which high place he continued till his papacy, with 
great revenue, good fame, and peace. Having become 
Pope, he made Cesare, his bastard son and bishop of 
Pampeluna, a Cardinal, against the ordinances and de- 
crees of the Church, which forbid the making of a bas- 
tard Cardinal even with the Pope's dispensation, where- 
fore he brought proof by false witnesses that he was 
born in wedlock. Afterwards he made him a laymai 
and took away the Cardinal's dignity from him, and 
turned his mind to making a realm; wherein he fared 
far better than he purposed, and beginning with Rome, 
after undoing the Orsini, Colonnesi, Savelli, and those 
barons who were wont to be held in fear by former 
Popes, he was more full master of Rome than ever had 
been any Pope before. With greatest ease he got the 
lordships of Romagna, the March, and the Duchy; and 
having made a most fair and powerful state, the Floren- 
tines held him in much fear, the Venetians in jealousy, 



APPENDIX III. 605 

And th'i King of France in esteem. Then having got 
together a fine army, he showed how great waa the 
might of a Pontiff when he hath a valiant general and 
one in whom he can place faith. At last he grew to 
that point that he was counted the balance in the war 
of France and Spain. In one word he was n^ore evil 
and more lucky than ever for many ages pera<iv<»«ature 
had been any pope before. 



APPENDIX IV. 

Religious Revivals in Mediceval Italy. See Chap. viii. p. 491 above 

It would be unscientific to confound events of such 
European importance as the foundation of the orders of 
S. Francis and S. Dominic v^^ith the phenomena in ques- 
tion. Still it may be remarked, that the sudden rise 
and the extraordinary ascendency of the mendicants and 
preachers were due in a great measure to the sensitive 
and lively imagination of the Italians. The Popes of the 
first half of the thirteenth century were shrewd enough 
to discern the political and ecclesiastical importance of 
movements which seemed at first to owe their force to 
mere fanatical revivalism. They calculated on the in- 
tensely excitable temperament of the Italian nation, and 
employed the Franciscans and Dominicans as their mi- 
litia in the crusade against the Empire and the heretics. 
Again, it is necessary to distinguish what was essentially 
national from what was common to all Europeans in the 
Middle Ages. Every country had its wandering hordes 
of flagellants and penitents, its crusaders and its pil- 
grims. The vast unsettled populations of mediseval 
Europe, haunted with the recurrent instinct of migra- 
tion, and nightmare-ridden by imperious religious yearn- 
ings, poured flood after flood of fanatics upon the shores 
of Palestine. Half-naked savages roamed, dancing and 
groaning and scourging their flesh, from city to city, 
under the stress of semi-bestial impulses. Then came 
the period of organized pilgrimages. The celebrated 
shiines of Europe — Rome, Coinpostella, Monte Gargano, 



« 



APPENDIX JV. 607 

CaiiLdrbury — acted like lightning-conductors to the tem- 
pestuous devotion of the mediaeval races, like setons 
to their over-charged imagination. In all these uni- 
versal movements the Italians had their share; though 
being more advanced in civilization than the Northern 
peoples, they turned the crusades to commercial ac- 
count, and maintained some moderation in the fakir 
tury of their piety. It is not, therefore, with the general 
history of religious enthusiasm in the Middle Ages that 
we have to do, but rather with those intermittent mani- 
festations of revivalism which were peculiar to the Ital- 
ians. The chief points to be noticed are the political 
'difluence acquired by monks in some of the Italian cities, 
the preaching of peace and moral reformation, the panics 
ot superstitious terror which seized upon wide districts, 
and the personal ascendency of hermits unaccredited 
by the Church, but believed by the people to be divinely 
inspired. 

One of the most picturesque figures of the first half 
ot the thirteenth century is the Dominican monk, John 
of Vicenza. His order, which had recently been foun- 
ded, was already engaged in the work of persecution. 
France was reeking with the slaughter of the Albigenses, 
and the stakes were smoking in the town of Milan, when 
this friar undertook the noble task of pacifying Lombardy. 
Every town in the north of Italy was at that period torn 
by the factions of the Guelfs and Ghibellines; private 
feuds crossed and intermingled with political discords; 
and the savage tyranny of Ezzelino had shaken the 
fabric of society to its foundations. It seemed utterly 
impossible to bring this people for a moment to agree- 
ment. Yet what popes and princes had failed to achieve, 
the voice of a single friar accomplished. John of Vicenza 
began his preaching in Bologna during the year 1233^ 



6o8 APPENDIX IV. 

The citizens and the country folk of the surrounding dis- 
tricts flocked to hear him. It was noticed with especial 
wonder that soldiers of all descriptions yielded to the 
magic of his eloquence. The themes of his discourse 
were invariably reconciliation and forgiveness of injuries. 
The heads of rival houses, who had prosecuted hereditary 
feuds for generations, met before his pulpit, and swore to 
live thenceforth in amity. Even the magistrates entreated 
him to examine the statutes of their city, and to point out 
any alterations by which the peace of the commonwealth 
might be assured. Having done his best for Bologna, 
John journeyed to Padua, where the fame of his sanctity 
had been already spread abroad. The carroccio of the 
city, on which the standard of Padua floated, and which 
had led the burghers to many a bloody battle, was sent 
out to meet him at Monselice, and he entered the gates 
in triumph. In Padua the same exhortations to peace 
produced the same results. Old enmities were aban- 
doned, and hands were clasped which had often been 
raised in fierce fraternal conflict. Treviso, Feltre, Bel- 
luno, Conegliano, and Romano, the very nests of the 
grim brood of Ezzelino, yielded to the charm. Verona, 
where the Scalas were about to reign, Vicenza, Mantua, 
and Brescia, all placed themselves at the disposition of 
the monk, and prayed him to reform their constitution. 
But it was not enough to restore peace to each separate 
community, to reconcile household with household, and 
to efface the miseries of civil discord. John of Vicenza 
aimed at consolidating the Lombard cities in one com- 
mon bond. For this purpose he bade the burghers of all 
the towns where he had preached to meet him on the 
plain of Paquara, in the country of Verona. The 28th of 
August was the day fixed for this great national assem- 
bly. More than four hundred thousand persons, accord- 



APPENDIX IV. 609 

ing to the computation of Parisio di Cere. appeared 
upon the scene. This multitude included the popula- 
tions of Verona, Mantua, Brescia, Padua, and Vicenza, 
marshaled under their several standards, together with 
contingents furnished by Ferrara, Modena, Reggio, 
Parma, and Bologna. Nor was the assembly confined 
to the common folk. The bishops of these flourishing 
cities, the haughty Marquis of Este, the fierce lord of 
Romano, and the Patriarch of Aquileia, obeyed the invi- 
tation of the friar. There, on the banks of the Adige, 
and within sight of the Alps, John of Vicenza ascended 
a pulpit that had been prepared for him, and preached a 
sermon on the text, Pacem meam do vobis, pacem relinquo 
vobis. The horrors of war, and the Christian duty of 
reconciliation, formed the subject of his sermon, at the 
end of which he constrained the Lombards to ratify a 
solemn league of amity, vowing to eternal perdition all 
who should venture to break the same, and imprecating 
curses on their crops, their vines, their cattle, and every- 
thing they had. Furthermore, he induced the Marquis of 
Este to take in marriage a daughter of Alberico da Ro- 
mano. Up to this moment John of Vicenza had made a 
noble use of the strange power which he possessed. But 
his success seems to have turned his head. Instead of 
confining himself to the work of pacification so well be- 
gun, he now demanded to be made lord of Vicenza, with 
the titles of Duke and Count, and to receive the supreme 
authority in Verona. The people, believing him to be a 
saint, readily acceded to his wishes; but one of the first 
things he did, after altering the statutes of these burghs, 
was to burn sixty citizens of Verona, whom he had him- 
self condemned as heretics. The Paduans revolted against 
his tyranny. Obliged to have recourse to arms, he was 
beaten and put in prison; and when he was released, at 



6ro APPENDIX IV, 

the intercession of the Pope, he found his wonderful pres- 
tige annihilated.^ 

The position of Fra Jacopo del Bussolaro in Pavia dif- 
fered from that of Fra Giovanni da Vicenza in Verona. 
Yet the commencement of his political authority was very 
nearly the same. The son of a poor boxmaker of Pavia, 
ne early took the habit of the Augustines, and acquired 
a reputation for sanctity by leading the austere life of a 
hermit. It happened in the year 1356 that he was com- 
missioned by the superiors of his order to preach the 
Lenten sermons to the people of Pavia. 'Then,' to quote 
Matteo Villani, * it pleased God that this monk should 
make his sermons so agreeable to every species of people, 
that the fame of them and the devotion they inspired in- 
creased marvelously. And he, seeing the concourse of 
the people, and the faith they bare him, began to de- 
nounce vice, and specially usury, revenge, and ill-be- 
havior of women; and thereupon he began to speak 
against the disorderly lordship of the tyrants; and in a 
short time he brought the women to modest manners, 
and the men to renunciation of usury and feuds.' The 
only citizens of Pavia who resisted his eloquence were the 
Beccaria family, who at that time ruled Pavia like des- 
pots. His most animated denunciations were directed 
against their extortions and excesses. Therefore they 
sought to slay him. But the people gave him a body- 
guard, and at last he wrought so powerfully with the 
burghers that they expelled the house of Beccaria and 
established a republican government. At this time the 
Visconti were laying siege to Pavia : the passes of the 
Ticino and the Po were occupied by Milanese troops, and 

> The most interesting accounts of Fra Giovanni da Vicenza are 
to be found in Muratori, vol. viii., in the Annals of Rolandini and 
Gerardus Maurisius. 



AFFENDIX IV. 6ll 

lite city was reduced to a state of blockade. Fra Jacopo 
assembled the able-bodied burghers, animated them by his 
eloquence, and led them to the attack of their besiegers. 
They broke through the lines of the beleaguering camp, 
nnd re-established the freedom of Pavia. What remained, 
nowever, of the Beccaria party passed over to the enemy, 
a.iid threw the whole weight of their influence into the 
scale of the Visconti : so that at the end of a three years' 
manful conflict, Pavia was delivered to Galeazzo Visconti 
*" ^359- Fra Jacopo made the best terms that he could 
tor the city, and took no pains to secure his own safety. 
He was consigned by the conquerors to the superiors of 
rits order, and died in the dungeons of a convent at Ver- 
ceJii. In his case, the sanctity of an austere life, and the 
eloquence of an authoritative preacher of repentance, had 
Deen strictly subordinated to political aims in the inter- 
ests of republican liberty. Fra Jacopo deserves to rank 
with Savonarola : like Savonarola, he fell a victim to the 
selfish and immoral oppressors of his country. As in the 
case of Savonarola, we can trace the connection which 
subsisted in Italy between a high standard of morality and 
patriotic heroism.^ 

San Bernardino da Massa heads a long list of preach- 
ers, who, without taking a prominent part in contempo- 
rary politics, devoted all their energies to the moral 
regeneration of the people. His life, written by Vespasi- 
ano da Bisticci, is one of the most valuable documents 
which we possess for the religious history of Italy in the 
first half of the fifteenth century. His parents, who were 
people of good condition, sent him at an early age to 
study the Canon law at Siena. They designed him for a 

' The best authorities for the lite and actions of Fra Jacopo are 
Matteo Villani, bks. 8 and 9, and Peter Azarius. in his Chronicle 
(Groevius. vol. ix.). 



6li APPENDIX IV. 

lucrative and important office in the Church. But, while 
yet a youth, he was seized with a profound conviction of 
the degradation of his countrymen. The sense of sin so 
weighed upon him that he sold all his substance, entered 
the order of S. Francis, and began to preach against the 
vices which were flagrant in the great Italian cities. 
After traveling through the length and breadth of the 
peninsula, and winning all men by the magic of his elo- 
quence, he came to Florence. * There,' says Vespasiano, 
* the Florentines being by nature very well disposed in- 
deed to truth, he so dealt that he changed the whole 
State and gave it, one may say, a second birth. And in 
order to abolish the false hair which the women wore, 
and games of chance, and other vanities, he caused a sort 
of large stall to be raised in the Piazza di Santa Croce, 
and bade every one who possessed any of these vanities 
to place them there; and so they did; and he set fire 
thereto and burned the whole.' S. Bernardino preached 
unremittingly for forty-two years in every quarter of Italy, 
and died at last worn out with fatigue and sickness. *0f 
many enmities and deaths of men he wrought peace and 
removed deadly hatreds ; and numberless princes, who 
harbored feuds to the death, he reconciled, and re- 
stored tranquillity to many cities and peoples.' A vivid 
picture of the method adopted by S. Bernardino in his 
dealings with these cities is presented to us by Graziani, 
the chronicler of Perugia: 'On September 23, 1425, a 
Sunday, there were, as far as we could reckon, upwards 
of 3,000 persons in the Cathedral. His sermon was from 
the Sacred Scripture, reproving men of every vice and 
sin, and teaching Christian living. Then he began to re- 
buke the women for their paints and cosmetics, and false 
hair, and such like wanton customs; and in like manner 
the men for their cards and dice-boards and masks and 



APPENDIX IV. 613 

amulets and charms: insomuch that within a fortnight 
the women sent all their false hair and gewgaws to the 
Convent of S. Francis, and the men their dice, cards, and 
such gear, to the amount of many loads. And on Octo- 
ber 29 Fra Bernardino collected all these devilish things 
on the piazza, where he erected a kind of wooden castle 
between the fountain and the Bishop's palace; and in this 
he put all the said articles, and set fire to them; and the 
fire was so great that none durst go near; and in the fire 
were burned things of the greatest value, and so great 
was the haste of men and women to escape that fire that 
many would have perished but for the quick aid of the 
burghers.' Together with this onslaught upon vanities, 
Fia Bernardino connected the preaching of peace and 
amity. It is noticeable that while his sermon lasted and 
the great bell of S. Lorenzo went on tolling, no man could 
be taken or imprisoned in the city of Perugia.^ 

The same city was the scene of many similar displays. 
During the fifteenth century it remained in a state of the 
most miserable internal discord, owing to the feuds of its 
noble families. Graziani gives an account of the preach- 
ing there of Fra Jacopo della Marca, in 1445: on this oc- 
casion a temporary truce was patched up between old 
enemies, a witch was burned for the edification of the 
burghers, the people were reproved for their extrava- 
gance in dress, and two peacemakers {paciej^i) were ap- 
pointed for each gate. On March 22, after undergoing 
this discipline, the whole of Perugia seemed to have re- 
pented of its sins; but the first entry for April 15 is the 
murder of one of the Ranieri family by another of the 
same house. So transitory were the effects of such re- 



» See Vespasiano, Vite di Uomini Illustri, pp. 185-92. Graziani, 
Arckivio Storico, vol. xvi. part i, pp. 313, 314. 



6 14 APPENDIX IV. 

vivals.' Another entry in Graziani's Ch7'onicle deserves 
to be noticed. He describes how, in 1448, Fra Roberto 
da Lecce (like S. Bernardino and Fra Jacopo della Marca, 
a Franciscan of the Order of Observance) came to preach 
in January. He was only twenty-two years of age; but 
his fame was so great that he drew about 15,000 persons 
into the piazza to listen to him. The stone pulpit, we 
may say in passing, is still shown, from w'hich these ser- 
mons were delivered. It is built into the wall of the 
Cathedral, and commands the whole square. Roberto da 
Lecce began by exhibiting a crucifix, which moved the 
audience to tears; 'and the weeping and crying, Jesu 
misericordia ! lasted about half an hour. Then he made 
four citizens be chosen for each gate as peacemakers.' 
What follows in Graziani is an account of a theatrical 
show, exhibited upon the steps of the Cathedral. On 
Good Friday the friar assembled all the citizens, and 
preached; and when the moment came for the elevation 
of the crucifix, 'tiiere issued forth from San Lorenzo Elisec 
di Christoforo, a barber of the quarter of Sant Angelo, 
like a naked Christ with the cross on his shoulder, and 
the crown of thorns upon his head, and his flesh seemed 
to be bruised as when Christ was scourged.' The people 
were immensely moved by this sight. They groaned and 
cried out, ^Misericordia ! ' and many monks were made 
upon the spot. At last, on April 7, Fra Roberto took 
his leave of the Perugians, crying as he went, ''La pace sia 
con voi!"^ We have a glimpse of the same Fra Roberto 
da Lecce at Rome, in the year 1482. The feuds of the 
noble families della Croce and della Valle were then rag- 
ing in the streets of Rome. On the night of April 3 they 
fought a pitched battle in the neighborhood of the Panthe 

» See Graziani, pp. 565-68. 
• Graziani, pp. 597-601. 



APPENDIX IV. 615 

on, the factions of Orsini and Colonna joining in the fray. 
Many of the combatants were left dead before the palaces 
of the Vallensi; the numbers of the wounded were vari- 
ously estimated; and all Rome seemed to be upon the 
verge of civil war. Roberto da Lecce, who was drawing 
large congregations, not only of the common folk, but 
also of the Roman prelates, to his sermons at Santa Maria 
sopra Minerva, interrupted his discourse upon the follow- 
ing Friday, and held before the people the image of their 
crucified Saviour, entreating them to make peace. As he 
pleaded with them, he wept; and they too fell to weep- 
ing — fierce satellites of the rival factions and worldly pre- 
lates lifting up their voice in concert with the friar who 
had touched their hearts.^ Another member of the Fran- 
ciscan Order of Observance should be mentioned after 
P>a Roberto. This was Fra Giovanni da Capistrano, of 
whose preaching at Brescia in 145 1 we have received a 
minute account. He brought with him a great reputa- 
tion for sanctity and eloquence, and for the miraculous 
cures which he had wrought. The Rectors of the city, 
together with 300 of the most distinguished burghers 
upon horseback, and a crowd of well-born ladies on foot, 
went out to meet him on February 9. Arrangements 
were made for the entertainment of himself and 100 fol- 
lowers, at public cost. Next morning, three hours before 
dawn, there were already assembled upwards of 10,000 
people on the piazza, waiting for the preacher. 'Think, 
therefore,' says the Chronicle ^ * how many there must have 
been in the daytime ! and mark this, that they came less 
to hear his sermon than to see him.' As he made his way 
through the throng, his frock was almost torn to pieces 
on his back, everybody struggling to get a fragment.' 

» See Jacobus Volaterranus, Muratori, xxiii. pp. 126, i56, 167. 
» See Istoria Bresciana. Muratori, xxi. 865. 



6l6 APPENDIX IV. 

It did not always need the interposition of a friar to 
arouse a strong religious panic in Italian cities. After an 
unusually fierce bout of discord the burghers themselves 
would often attempt to give the sanction of solemn rites 
and vows before the altar to their temporary truces. 
Siena, which was always more disturbed by civil strife 
than any of her neighbors, offered a notable example of 
this custom in the year 1494. The factions of the Monti 
de' Nove and del Popolo had been raging; the city was 
full of feud and suspicion, and all Italy was agitated by 
the French invasion. It seemed good, therefore, to the 
heads of the chief parties that an oath of peace should be 
taken by the whole body of the burghers. AUegretti's ac- 
count of the ceremony, which took place at dead of night 
in the beautiful Cathedral of Siena, is worthy to be trans- 
lated. * The conditions of the peace were then read, which 
took up eight pages, together with an oath of the most 
horrible sort, full of maledictions, imprecations, excom- 
munications, invocations of evil, renunciation of benefits 
temporal and spiritual, confiscation of goods, vows, and 
so many other woes that to hear it was a terror; et etiam 
that in articulo mortis no sacrament should accrue to the 
salvation, but rather to the damnation of those who might 
break the said conditions; insomuch that I, Allegretto 
di Nanni Allegretti, being present, believe that never 
was made or heard a more awful and horrible oath. Then 
the notaries of the Nove and the Popolo, on either side 
of the altar, wrote down the names of all the citizens, 
who swore upon the crucifix, for on each side there was 
one, and every couple of the one and the other faction 
kissed; and the bells clashed, and Te Dciim laudamus v^^% 
sung with the organs and the choir while the oath was 
being taken. All this happened between one and two 
hours of the night, with many torches lighted. Now may 



APPENDIX IV. 617 

God will that this be peace indeed, and tranquillity for all 
citizens, whereof I doubt.' ^ The doubt of Allegretti was 
but too reasonable. Siena profited little by these dread- 
ful oaths and terrifying functions. Two years later on, 
the same chronicler tells how it was believed that blood 
had rained outside the Porta a Laterino, and that various 
visions of saints and specters had appeared to holy per- 
sons, proclaiming changes in the state, and commanding 
a public demonstration of repentance. Each parish or- 
ganized a procession, and all in turn marched, some by 
day and some by night, singing Litanies, and beating and 
scourging themselves, to the Cathedral, where they ded- 
icated candles; and *one ransomed prisoners, for an of- 
fering, and another dowered a girl in marriage.' 

In Bologna in 1457 a similar revival took place on the 
occasion of an outbreak of the plague. * Flagellants went 
round the city, and when they came to a cross, they all 
cried with a loud voice: Misericordia ! misericordia ! For 
eight days there was a strict fast; the butchers shut their 
shops.* What follows in the Chronicle is comic: 'Mere- 
trices ad concubita nullum admittebant. Ex eis quadam 
quae cupiditate lucri adolescentem admiserat, deprehensa, 
aliae meretrices ita illius nates nudas corrigiis percusser- 
unt, ut sanguinem emitteret.'^ Ferrara exhibited a like 
devotion in 1496, on even a larger scale. About this 
time the entire Italian nation was panic-stricken by the 
passage of Charles VIII. , and by the changes in states 
and kingdoms which Savonarola had predicted. The 
Ferrarese, to quote the language of their chronicler, ex- 
pected that * in this year, throughout Italy, would be the 
greatest famine, war, and want that had ever been since 
the world began.' Therefore they fasted, and ' the Dukf 

' See Muratori, vol. xxiii. p. 839. 

• Annates Bononienses. Mur. xxiii. 890. 



5l8 APPENDIX IV. 

of Ferrara fasted together with the whole of his court. 
At the same time a proclamation was made against 
swearing, games of hazard, and unlawful trades: and it 
was enacted that the Jews should resume their obnox- 
ious yellow gaberdine with the O upon their breasts. In 
1 500 these edicts were repeated. The condition of Italy 
had grown worse and worse: it was necessary to besiege 
the saints with still more energetic demonstrations. 
Therefore ' the Duke Ercole d' Este, for good reasons 
to him known, and because it is always well to be on good 
terms with God, ordained that processions should be made 
every third day in Ferrara, with the whole clergy, and 
about 4,CHDO children or more from twelve years of age 
upwards, dressed in white, and each holding a banner 
with a painted Jesus. His lordship, and his sons and 
brothers, followed this procession, namely the Duke on 
horseback, because he could not then walk, and all the 
rest on foot, behind the Bishop.'* A certain amount of 
irony transpires in this quotation, which would make one 
fancy that the chronicler suspected the Duke of ulterior, 
and perhaps political, motives. 

It sometimes happened that the contagion of such 
devotion spread from city to city; on one occasion, in 
1399, it traveled from Piedmont through the whole of 
Italy. The epidemic of flagellants, of which Giovanni 
Villani speaks in 1310 (lib. viii. cap. 121), began also in 
Piedmont, and spread along the Genoese Riviera. The 
Florentine authorities refused entrance to these fanatics 
into their territory. In 1334, Villani mentions another 
outburst of the same devotion (lib xi. cap. 23), which was 
excited by the preaching of Fra Venturino da Bergamo. 
The penitents on this occasion wore for badge a dove 

> Diario Ferrarese. Mur. xxiv. pp. 17-386. 



APPENDIX IV. 615 

with the olive-branch. They staid fifteen days in Flor- 
ence, scourging themselves before the altars of the Do- 
minican churches, and feasting, five hundred at a time, 
in the Piazzi di S. M. Novella. Corio, in the Storia dt 
Mila7io (p. 281), gives an interesting account of these 
•'white penitents,' as they were called, in the year 1399: 
'Multitudes of men, women, girls, boys, small and great, 
townspeople and countryfolk, nobles and burghers, laity 
and clergy, with bare feet and dressed in white sheets 
from head to foot,' visited the towns and villages of every 
district in succession. * On their journey, when they 
came to a cross-road or to crosses, they threw them- 
selves on the ground, crying Misericordia three times; 
then they recited the Lord's Prayer and the Ave Maria. 
On their entrance into a city, they walked singing Sta- 
bat Mater dolorosa and other litanies and prayers. The 
population of the places to which they came were di- 
vided: for some went forth and told those who staid that 
they should assume the same habit, so that at one time 
there were as many as 10,000, and at another as many 
as 15,000 of them.' After admitting that the fruit of this 
devotion was in many cases penitence, amity, and alms- 
giving, Corio goes on to observe: ' However, men re- 
turned to a worse life than ever after it was over.' It 
is noticeable that Italy was devastated in 1400 by a hor- 
rible plague; and it is impossible not to believe that the 
crowding of so many penitents together on the highways 
and in the cities led to this result. 

, During the anarchy of Italy between 1494 — the date 
of the invasion of Charles VIII. — and 1527 — the date of 
the sack of Rome — the voice of preaching friars and 
hermits was often raised, and the effect was always to 
drive the people to a frenzy of revivalistic piety. Milan 
was the center of the military operations of the French, 



620 APPENDIX /r. 

the Swiss, the Spaniards, and the Germans. No city 
suffered more cruelly, and in none were fanatical prophets 
received with greater superstition. In 1516 there ap- 
peared in Milan *a layman, large of stature, gaunt, and 
beyond measure wild, without shoes, without shirt, bare- 
headed, with bristly hair and beard, and so thin that he 
seemed another Julian the hermit.' He lived on water 
and millet-seed, slept on the bare earth, refused alms of 
all sorts, and preached with wonderful authority. In 
spite of the opposition of the Archbishop and the 
Chapter, he chose the Duomo for his theater; and 
there he denounced the vices of the priests and monks 
to vast congregations of eager listeners. In a word, 
he engaged in open warfare with the clergy on their 
own ground. But they of course proved too strong for 
him, and he was driven out of the city. He was a 
native of Siena, aged 30.^ We may compare with this 
picturesque apparition of Jeronimo in Milan what Varchi 
says about the prophets who haunted Rome like birds 
of evil omen in the first years of the pontificate of 
Clement VII. 'Not only friars from the pulpit, but 
hermits on the piazza, went about preaching and pre- 
dicting the ruin of Italy and the end of the world with 
wild cries and threats.'* In 1523 Milan beheld the spec- 
tacle of a parody of the old preachers. There appeared 
a certain Frate di S. Marco, whom the people held for 
a saint, and who ' encouraged the Milanese against the 
French, saying it was a merit with Jesus Christ to slay 
those Frenchmen, and that they were pigs.' He seems 



' See Prato and Burigozzo, Arch, Stor. vol. iii. pp. 357, 431. It 
is here worth noticing that Siena, the city of civil discord, was also 
the city of frenetic piety. The names of S. Caterina, S. Bernardino, 
and Bernardo Tolomei occur to the mind. 
• Storia Fiorentina, vol. i. p. 87. 



APPENDIX IV. 621 

to have been a feeble and ignorant fellow, whose head 
had been turned by the examples of Bussolaro and 
Savonarola.^ Again, in 1529, we find a certain monk, 
Tommaso, of the order of S. Dominic, stirring up a great 
commotion of piety in Milan. The city had been brought 
1 o the very lowest state of misery by the Spanish oc- 
rupation; and, strange to say, this friar was himself a 
Spaniard. In order to propitiate offended deities, he 
organized a procession on a great scale. 700 women, 
500 men, and 2,500 children assembled in the cathedral. 
The children were dressed in white, the men and women 
in sackcloth, and all were barefooted. They promenaded 
the streets of Milan, incessantly shouting Misericordia ! 
md besieged the Duomo with the same dismal cry, 
:he Bishop and the Municipal authorities of Milan taking 
part in the devotion.^ These gusts of penitential piety 
were matters of real national importance. Writers im- 
bued with the classic spirit of the Renaissance thought 
:hem worthy of a place in their philosophical histories. 
Thus we find Pitti, in the Storia FiorenHna {Arch. Stor, 
/ol. i. p. 112), describing what happent^d at Florence 
in 1514:- 'There appeared in Santa Crocij a Frate Fran- 
cesco da Montepulciano, very young, wh^ rebuked vice 
with severity, and affirmed that God had willed to 
scourge Italy, especially Florence and Rome, in ser- 
mons so terrible that the audience kept crying with 
Hoods of tears, Misericordia! The whole people were 
struck dumb with horror, for those who could not hear 
<-he friar by reason of the crowd, listened with no less 
fear to the reports of others. At last ue preached a 
.ermon so awful that the congregation stood like men 
A'ho had lost their senses; for he promii^ed to reveal 

i Arch. St')r. vol. iii. p. 443. • Burigozzo, pp. 485-^ 



632 APPENDIX IV, 

upon the third day how and from what source he had 
received this prophecy. However, when he left the 
pulpi-t, worn out and exhausted, he was seized with an 
illness of the lungs, which soon put an end to his life. 
Pitti goes on to relate the frenzy of revivalism excited 
by this monk's preaching, which had roused all the old 
memories of Savonarola in Florence. It became neces- 
sary for the Bishop to put down the devotion by spe- 
cial edicts, while the Medici endeavored to distract the 
minds of the people by tournaments and public shows. 

Enough has now been quoted from various original 
sources to illustrate the feverish recurrences of supersti- 
tious panics in Italy during the Middle Ages and the Re- 
naissance. It will be observed, from what has been said 
about John of Vicenza, Jacopo del Bussolaro, S. Ber- 
nardino, Roberto da Lecce, Giovanni della Marca, and 
Fra Capistrano, that Savonarola was by no means an ex- 
traordinary phenomenon in Italian history. Combining 
the methods and the aims of all these men, and remain- 
ing within the sphere of their conceptions, he impressed 
a role, which had been often played in the chief Italian 
towns, with the stamp of his peculiar genius. It was a 
source of weakness to him in his combat with Alexander 
VI., that he could not rise above the monastic ideal of 
the prophet which prevailed in Italy, or grasp one of 
those regenerative conceptions which formed the motive 
force of the Reformation. The inherent defects of all 
Italian revivals, spasmodic in their paroxysms, vehement 
while they lasted, but transient in their effects, are ex- 
hibited upon a tragic scale by Savonarola. What strikes 
us, after studying the records of these movements in It- 
aly, is chiefly their want of true mental energy. The 
momentary effect produced in great cities like Florence, 
Milan, Verona, Pavia, Bologna, and Perugia is quite out 



APPENDIX IV. 623 

of proportion to the slight intellectual power exerted by 
the prophet in each case. He has nothing really new 
or life-giving to communicate. He preaches indeed the 
duty of repentance and charity, institutes a reform of 
glaring moral abuses, and works as forcibly as he can 
upon the imagination of his audience. But he sets no 
current of fresh thought in motion. Therefore, when hib 
personal influence was once forgotten, he left no mark 
upon the nation he so deeply agitated. We can only 
wonder that, in many cases, he obtained so complete an 
ascendency in the political world. All this is as true of 
Savonarola as it is of S. Bernardino. It is this which re- 
moves him so immeasurably from Huss, from Wesley 
and from Luther. 



APPENDIX V. 

The ^ Sommario della Storia d' Italia dal 1511 al 1527/^ Frath 
cesco Vettori. • 

I HAVE reserved for special notice in this Appendix the 
short history written of the period between 151 1 and 1527 
by Francesco Vettori; not because I might not have 
made use of it in several of the previous chapters, but 
because it seemed to me that it was better to concen- 
trate in one place the illustrations of Machiavelli and 
Guicciardini which it supplies. Francesco Vettori was 
born at Florence in 1474 of a family which had distin- 
guished itself by giving many able public servants to the 
Commonwealth. He adopted the politics of the Medi- 
cean party, remaining loyal to his aristocratic creed all 
through the troublous times which followed the French 
invasion of 1494, the sack of Prato in 1 5 12, the sack of 
Rome in 1527, and the murder of Duke Alessandro in 
1536. Even when he seemed to favor a republican pol- 
icy, he continued in secret stanch to the family by whom 
he hoped to obtain honors and privileges in the state. 
Like all the Ottimati, so furiously abused by Pitti, Fran- 
cesco Vettori found himself at last deceived in his ex- 
pectations. To the Medici they sold the freedom of their 
native city, and in return for this unpatriotic loyalty they 
were condemned to exile, death, imprisonment, or frosty 
toleration by the prudent Cosimo. Two years after Cos- 
imo had been made Duke, Vettori died, aged upwards 

« Printed in Arch, Stor, It. Appendice No. 22, vol. vi 



APPENDIX V. 



625 

ot sixty, without having shared in the prosperity of the 
princes to whose service he had consecrated his life and 
for whose sake he had helped to enslave Florence. To 
respect this species of fidelity, or to feel any pity for the 
men who were so cruelly disappointed of their selfish ex- 
pectations, is impossible. 

Francesco Vettori held offices of importance on va- 
rious occasions in the Commonwealth of Florence. In 
1520, for example, he entered the Signory; and in 1521 
he was Gonfalonier of Justice. Many years of his life 
were spent on foreign missions, as ambassador to the 
Emperor Maximilian, resident ambassador at the Courts 
of Julius and Leo, ambassador together with Filippo 
Strozzi to the Court of Francis I., and orator at Rome 
on the election of Clement. H.e had therefore, like 
Machiavelli and Guicciardini, the best opportunities of 
forming a correct judgment of the men whose charac- 
ters he weighed in his Sommario, and of obtaining a 
faithful account of the events which he related. He de- 
serves a place upon the muster-roll of literary statesmen 
mentioned by me in chapter v. ; nor should I have omit- 
ted him from the company of Segni and Varchi, had not 
his history been exclusively devoted to an earlier period 
than theirs. At the same time he was an intimate friend 
both of Guicciardini and Machiavelli. Some of the most 
precious compositions of the latter are letter.*? addressed 
from Florence or San Casciano to Francesco Vettori, at 
the time when the ex-war-secretary was attempting to 
gain the favor of the Medici. The clairvoyance and acute- 
ness, the cynical philosophy of life, the definite judgment 
of men, the clear comprehension of events, wh^'ch we 
trace in Machiavelli, are to be found in Vettori. Vettori, 
however, had none of Machiavelli's genius. What he 
writes is, therefore, valuable as proving that the Macb^ 



626 APPENDIX y. 

iavellian philosophy was not peculiar to that great man» 
but was shared by many inferior thinkers. Florentine 
culture at the end of the fifteenth century culminated in 
these statists of hard brain and stony hearts, who only 
saw the bad in human nature, but who were not led by 
cynicism or skepticism to lose their interest in the game 
of politics. 

In the dedication of the Sontmario delta Storia d* 
Italia to Francesco Scarfi, Vettori says that he com- 
posed it at his villa, whither he retired in 1527. I do 
not purpose to extract portions of the historical narra- 
tive contained in this sketch; to do so indeed would be 
to transcribe the whole, so closely and succinctly is it 
written; but rather to quote the passages which throw 
a light upon the opinions of Machiavelli and Guicciardini, 
or confirm the views of men and morals adopted in my 
previous chapters. 

After touching on the sack of Prato and the conster- 
nation which ensued in Florence, Vettori describes the 
return of the Medici in 1 5 12. Giuliano, the son of Lo- 
renzo, was the first to appear: after him came the Car- 
dinal Giovanni, and Giuliano's son Giulio.^ The elder 
among their partisans persuaded them to call a Parla- 
mento and assume the government in earnest. On Sep- 
tember 16, accordingly, the Cardinal took possession of 
the palace, fece pigliare il Palazzo ; the Signory sum- 
moned the people into the piazza — a mere matter of 
form; a Balia of forty men was appointed; the Gonfa- 
lonier Ridolfi resigned; and the city was reduced to the 
will and pleasure of the Cardinal de' Medici. Then rea- 
sons Vettori: * ' This was what is called an absolute tyr- 
anny; yet, speaking of the things of this world without 

I Giovanni and Giulio were afterwards Leo X. and Clement VII. 
• P. 293. 



APPENDIX V. 6a7 

prejudice and according to the truth, I say that if it were 
possible to institute republics like that imagined by Plato, 
or feigned to exist in Utopia by Thomas More, we might 
affirm they were not tyrannical governments: but all the 
commonwealths or kingdoms I have seen or read of, have 
it seems to me, a savor of tyranny. Nor is it a matter 
for astonishment that parties and factions have often pre- 
vailed in Florence, and that one man has arisen to make 
himself the chief, when we reflect that the city is very 
populous, that many of the burghers desire to share in its 
advantages, and that there are few prizes to distribute : 
wherefore one party always must have the upper hand 
and enjoy the honors and benefits of the state, while the 
other stands by to watch the game.' He then proceeds 
to criticise France, where the nobles alone bear arms and 
pay no taxes, and where the administration of justice is 
slow and expensive; and Venice, where three thousand 
gentlemen keep more than 100,000 of the inhabitants be- 
low their feet, unhonored, powerless, unprivileged, op- 
pressed. Having demonstrated the elements of tyranny 
and injustice both in a kingdom and a commonwealth re- 
puted prosperous and free, he shows that, according to 
his own philosophy, no blame attaches to a burgher who 
succeeds in usurping the sole mastery of a free state, pro- 
vided he rule wisely; for all kingdoms were originally 
founded either by force or by craft. ' We ought not there- 
fore to call that private citizen a tyrant who has usurped 
the government of his state, if he be a good man ; nor 
again to call a man the real lord of a city who, though he 
has the investiture of the Emperor, is bad and malevo- 
lent.' This critique of constitutions from the pen of a 
doctrinaire, who was also a man of experience, is inter- 
esting, partly for its positive frankness, and partly as 
showing what elementary notions still prevailed about 



6a8 APPENDIX V. 

the purposes of government. Vettori's ultimate criterion 
is the personal quality of the ambitious ruler. 

Passing to what he says about Leo X.,* it is worth 
while to note that he attributes his election chiefly to the 
impression produced upon the Cardinals by Alexander 
and Julius. * During the reign of two fierce and powerful 
Pontiffs, Cardinals had been put to death, imprisoned, de- 
prived of their property, exiled, and kept in continual 
alarm; and so great was the dread among them now of 
electing another such Pope, that they unanimously chose 
Giovanni de* Medici. Up to that time he had always 
shown himself liberal and easy, or, rather, prodigal in 
squandering the little that he owned; he had moreover 
managed so to dissemble as to acquire a reputation for 
most excellent habits of life.' Vettori adds that his power 
in Florence helped him, and that he owed much to the 
ability displayed by Bernardo da Bibbiena in winning 
votes. The joy of the Florentines at his election is at- 
tributed to mean motives: 'being all of them given over 
to commerce and gain, they thought they ought to get 
some profit from this Papacy.* * 

The government which Lorenzo, afterwards Duke of 
Urbino, now established in Florence is very favorably de- 
scribed by Vettori.' * Lorenzo, though still a young man, 
applied himself with great attention to the business of the 
city, providing that equal justice should be administered 
to all, that the public moneys should be levied and spent 
with frugality, and that disputes should be settled to the 
satisfaction of all parties. His rule was tolerated, because, 
while the revenues were large and the expenses small, the 
citizens were not troubled with taxes; and this is the 
chief way to please a people, seeing their affection for a 
prince is measured by the good they get from him. 

« P. 297. • P. 300. » Ibid. 



APPENDIX V. 629 

Taking this opinion of Lorenzo, it is possible for Vettori 
in another place to say of him that * he governed Flor- 
ence like a citizen; '^ and on the occasion of his death in 
1520, he passes what amounts to a panegyric on his char- 
acter. * His death was a misfortune for Florence, which 
it would be difficult to describe. Though young, he had 
the qualities of virtuous maturity. He bore a real affec- 
tion toward the citizens, was parsimonious of the moneys 
of the Commune, prodigal of his own; while a foe to vice, 
he was not too severe on those who erred. Though he 
began his military life at twenty-three, he always bore 
the cuirass of a man at arms upon his shoulders day and 
night on active service. He slept very little, was sober 
in his diet, temperate in love. The Florentines did not 
love him, because it is not possible for men used to free- 
dom to love a ruler; but he, for his part, had not sought 
the office which was thrust upon him by the will of oth- 
ers. Madonna Alfonsina, his mother, brought unpopu- 
larity upon him; for she was avaricious, and the Floren- 
tines, who noticed every detail, thought her grasping: 
and though he wanted to restrain her, he found himself 
unable to do so through the high esteem in which he held 
her. Maddalena, his wife, died six days before him, after 
giving birth to a daughter Catherine.' This is the, no 
doubt, highly favorable portrait of the man to whom 
Machiavelli dedicated his Principe. The somewhat neg- 
ative good qualities of Lorenzo, his prudence and parsi- 
mony, his freedom from despotic ambition, and dislike of 
dangerous service, combined with his deference to the 
powerful members of his own family, are very unlike 
Machiavelli's ideal of the founder of a state. Cesare 
Borgia was almost the exact opposite. The impression 
produced by Vettori's panegyric is further confirmed by 

> P. 306. 



630 APPENDIX V. 

what he says about Lorenzo's disinclination to undertake 
the Duchy of Urbino.* 

But to return to the early days of Leo's pontificate. 
Vettori marks his interference in the affairs of Lucca as 
the first great mistake he made.' His advisers in Flor- 
ence had not reflected * what infamy it would bring upon 
the Pope in the opinion of all men, or what suspicion it 
would rouse among the princes, if in the first months of 
his power he were led to sanction an attack by the Flor- 
entines upon the Lucchese, their neighbors and allies. 
How too could the burghers of Florence, who had urged 
him to this step, remind the pontiff that he ought to 
moderate his desire of gaining dominion for the Church 
and for his kin, by the example of former Popes, all of 
whom, in the interest of their dependents, had acquired 
to their own dishonor with peril and expense what in a 
few days upon their death returned to the old and right- 
ful owners t ' The conduct of Leo with regard to Lucca, 
his policy in Florence, and the splendor maintained by his 
brother at Rome, did in fact rouse the jealousy of the 
Italian powers both great and small.' * King Ferdinand 
remarked : If Giuliano has left Florence, he must be aim- 
ing at something better, which can be nothing but the 
realm of Naples. The Dukes of Milan, Ferrara, and Ur- 
bino said the same. The Sienese thought: If the pope 
allows the Florentines to attack Lucca, which is so 
strong, well furnished, and harmonious, far more will 
he consent to their encroaching upon us, who are weak, 
ill-provided, and at odds among ourselves. The Duke 
of Ferrara had further reasons for discontent in respect 
to Modena and Reggio.' Altogether, Leo began to lose 
credit. Secret alliances were formed against him by the 
della Rovere, the Baglioni, and the Petrucci; and though 

» P. 321. See too p. 307. • P. 301. • P. J^ 



APPENDIX V. 631 

he took care to attend public services and to fast more 
than etiquette required, nobody believed in him. Vet- 
tori's comment reads like an echo of Machiavelli and 
Guicciardini.* 'Assuredly it is most difficult to combine 
temporal lordship with a reputation for religion: for they 
are two things which will not harmonize. He who well 
considers the law of the Gospel will observe that the 
pontiffs, though called Christ's Vicars, have originated a 
new religion unlike that of Christ except in name. His 
enjoins poverty; they desire riches. He preached humil- 
ity; they follow after pride. He commanded obedience; 
they aim at universal sovereignty. I could enlarge upon 
their other vices; but it is enough to allude to these, 
without entering into inconvenient discourses.' While 
treating of the affairs of Urbino,'' however, Vettori re- 
marks that Leo could not have done otherwise than pun- 
ish Francesco Maria della Rovere, if he wished to main- 
tain the Papacy at the height of reputation to which it 
had been raised by his predecessors. 

In his general estimate of Leo, Vettori confirms all 
that we know about this Pope from other sources. He 
insists more perhaps than other historians upon the able 
diplomacy by which Lodovico Canossa, Bishop of Tri- 
carico, made terms with Francis after Marignano,' and 
traces Leo's fatal alliance with Charles V. in 1520 to the 
influence of Jeronimo Adorno.* The secret springs of 
Leo's conduct, when he was vainly endeavoring to steer 
to his own profit between the great rivals for power in 
Europe, are exposed with admirable precision at both of 
these points. Of the prodigality which helped to ruin 
this Pope, and which made his two successors impotent, 
he speaks with sneering sarcasm. * It was as easy for 
him to keep l,cxx) ducats together as for a stone to fly 

« P. 304. "P. 319. « P. 313. ' P. 334. 



633 APPENDIX V. 

into the air by its own weight.' * When the news of the 
capture of Milan reached him on November 27, 1520, Leo 
was at the Villa Magliana in the neighborhood of Rome.' 
Whether he took cold at a window, or whether his anx- 
iety and jealousy disturbed his constitution, Vettori re- 
mains uncertain. At any rate, he was attacked with 
fever, returned to Rome, and died. ' It was said that his 
death was caused by poison; but these stories are always 
circulated about men of high estate, especially when they 
succumb to acute disease. Those, however, who knew 
the constitution and physical conformation of Leo, and 
his habits of life, will rather wonder that he lived so long.' 
After summing up the vicissitudes of his career and pass- 
ing a critique upon his vacillating policy, Vettori re- 
sumes:^ * while on the one hand he would fain have never 
had one care to trouble him; on the other he was desir- 
ous of fame and sought to aggrandize his kindred. For- 
tune, to rid him of this ambition, removed his brother 
and his nephew in his lifetime. Lastly, when he had en- 
gaged in a war against the King of France, in which, if 
he won, he lost, and was going to meet obvious ruin, for- 
tune removed him from the world so that he might not 
see his own mischance. In his pontificate at Rome there 
was no plague, no poverty, no war. Letters and the art? 
flourished, and the vices were also at their height. Alex- 
ander and Julius had been wont to seize the inheritance 
not only of the prelates but of every little priest or clerk 
who died in Rome. Leo abstained entirely from such 
practices. Therefore people came in crowds; and it may 
be said for certain that in the eight years of his papacy, 
the population of Rome increased by one third.' Vettori 
prudently refuses to sum up the good and bad of Leo's 
character in one decisive sentence. He notes, however, 

« P. 331. • P. 338. » P. 339- 



APPENDIX V. 633 

that he was blamed for not keeping to his word: Mt was 
a favorite expression with him, that princes ought to give 
such answers as would send petitioners away satisfied; 
accordingly he made so many promises, and fed people 
with such great expectations, that it became impossible 
to please them.' 

The election of Adrian is attributed by Vettori to 
the mutual hatred and jealousy of the Cardinals.* He 
ascribes the loss of Rhodes to the Pope's want of interest 
in great affairs, adds his testimony to his private ex- 
cellence and public incapacity, and dismisses him with- 
out further notice.' 

What he tells us about Clement is more interesting. 
In the dedication to the Sommario he apologized in 
express terms for the high opinion recorded of this Pope. 
Yet the impression which he leaves upon our mind by 
what he writes is so unfavorable as to make it clear what 
Clement's foes habitually said against him. He remarks, 
as one excuse for his ill-success in office, that he suc- 
ceeded to a Papacy ruined by the prodigality in war and 
peace of Leo.* As knight of Rhodes, as governor of 
Florence, and as Cardinal, Clement had shown himself 
an able man. Fortune heaped her favors on him then. 
As soon as he was made Pope, she veered round. * From 
a puissant and respected Cardinal, he became a feeble 
and discredited Pope.' His first care was to provide for 
the government of Florence. In order to arrive at a de- 
cision, he asked council of the Florentine orators and 
four other noble burghers then in Rome, as to whether 
he could advantageously intrust the city to the Cardinal 
of Cortona in guardianship over Ippolito and Alessandro 
the young bastards of the Medici.* * All men nearly, 

» P. 341. « Pp. 343. 347. ' P. 348. 

« P. 349. They were 14 and 13 years of age respectively. 



634 APPENDIX V. 

says Vettori, * are flatterers, and say what they believe 
will please great folk, although they think the contrary. 
Of the thirteen whom the Pope consulted, ten advised 
him to send Ippolito to Florence under the guardianship 
of the Cardinal of Cortona.' The remaining three, who 
were Ruberto Acciajuoli, Lorenzo Strozzi, and Francesco 
Vettori, pointed out the impropriety of administering a 
free city through a priest who held his title from a sub- 
ject town. They recommended the appointment of a 
Gonfalonier for one year, and so on, till a member of the 
Medicean family could take the lead. Clement, how- 
ever, decided on the other course; and to this cause may 
be traced half the troubles of his reign. 

The greater part of what remains of the Sommario is 
occupied with the wars and intrigues of Francis, Charles, 
and Clement. Vettori, it may be said in passing, records 
a very unfavorable opinion of the Marquis of Pescara, 
who was, he hints, guilty of first turning a favorable ear 
to Moroni's plot and then of discovering the whole to 
his master.* A few days after his breach of faith with 
the Milanese, he fell ill and died. ' He was a man whose 
military excellence cannot be denied; but proud beyond 
all measure, envious, ungrateful, avaricious, venomous, 
cruel, without religion or humanity, he was born to be 
the ruin of Italy; and it may be truly said that of the 
evil she has suffered and still suffers, a large part was 
caused by him.' 

Of the breach of faith of Francis, after he had left his 
Spanish prison, Vettori speaks in terms of the very high- 
est commendation." His refusal to cede Burgundy to 
Charles was just and patriotic. That he broke hi? faith 
was no crime; for, though a man ought rather to die 
than forswear himself, yet his first duty is to God, his 

» Pp. 358, 35^ • P. 36(1, 



APPENDIX V. 635 

second to his country. Francis was clearly acting for 
the benefit of his kingdom; and had he not left his two 
sons as hostage'^ in Spain ? The whole defense is a good 
piece of specious pleading, and might be used to illustrate 
the chapter on the Faith of Princes in the Principe, 

By far the most striking passage in Vettori's Som- 
nario is the description of the march of Frundsberg's and 
De Bourbon's army upon Rome.* He makes it clear to 
A hat extent the calamity of the sack was due to the selfish- 
less and cowardice of the Italian princes. First of all the 
Venetians refused to offer any obstacles before the passage 
3f the Po, feeling that by doing so they might draw trou- 
ble on their own provinces. Then the Duke of Ferrara 
lupplied the Lutherans with artillery, of which they hith- 
erto had stood in need. The first use they made of their 
ire-arms was to shoot the best captain in Italy, Giovanni 
de' Medici of the Black Bands. The Duke of Urbino, the 
Marquis of Saluzzo, and Guido Rangoni watched them 
cross the river and proceed by easy stages through the 
district of Piace^^a, * following them like lacqueys wait- 
ing on their lords.* The same thing happened at Parma 
and Modena, while the Duke of Ferrara kept supplying 
the foreigners with food and money. Clement mean- 
while was penniless in Rome. Rich as the city was, he 
had so utterly lost credit that he dared not ask for loans, 
and was so feeble that he could not rob. The Colonnesi, 
moreover, who had recently plundered the Vatican, kept 
him in a state of terror. As the invaders, now com- 
manded by the Constable de Bourbon, approached Tus- 
cany, the youth of Florence demanded to be armed in 
defense of their hearths and homes. The Cardinal of 
Cortona, fearing a popular rising, refused to grant their 
request. A riot broke out, and the Medici were threat- 

• Pp. 373-83. 



6^6 APPENDIX V. 

ened with expulsion: but by the aid of influential citizens 
a revolution was averted. The Constable, avoiding Flor- 
ence and Siena, marched straight on Rome, still watched 
but unmolested by the armies of the League. He left 
his artillery on the road, and, as is well known, carried 
the walls of Rome by assault on the morning of May 3, 
dying himself at the moment of victory. From what has 
just been rapidly narrated, it will be seen how utterly ab- 
ject was the whole of Italy at this moment, when a band 
of ruffians, headed by a rebel from his sovereign, in dis- 
obedience to the viceroy of the king he pretended to 
serve, was not only allowed but actually helped to trav- 
erse rivers, plains, and mountains, on their way to Rome. 
What happened after the capture of the Transteverine 
part of the city moves even deeper scorn. ' It still re- 
mained for the Imperial troops to enter the populous ana 
wealthy quarters; and these they had to reach by one 01 
three bridges. They numbered hardly more than 25.000 
men, all told. In Rome were at least 30,000 men fit tu 
bear arms between the ages of sixteen and fifty, and 
among them were many trained soldiers, besides crowds 
of Romans, swaggering braggarts used to daily quarrels, 
with beards upon their breasts. Nevertheless, it was 
found impossible to get 500 together in one band for the 
defense of one of the three bridges.* What immediately 
follows gives so striking a picture of the sack: that a 
translation of it will form a fit conclusion to this volume. 
I* The soldiers slew at pleasure; pillaged the houses of the 
middle classes and small folk, the palaces of the nobles. 
the convents of both sexes, and the churches. Thev 
made prisoners of men, women, and even of little chil- 
dren, without regard to age, or vows, or any other clairij 
on pity. The slaughter was not great, for men rarely kill 
those who oflfer no resistance: but the booty was incalcu- 



APPENDIX V. 637 

lable, in coin, jewels, gold and silver plate, clothes, tap- 
estries, furniture, and goods of all descriptions. To this 
should be added the ransoms, which amounted to a sum 
that, if set down, would win no credence. Let any one 
consider through how many years the money of all Chris- 
tendom had been flowing into Rome, and staying there in 
.1 great measure; let him remember the Cardinals, Bish- 
ops, Prelates, and public officers, the wealthy merchants, 
both Roman and foreign, selling at high prices, letting 
their houses at dear rents, and paying nothing in the way 
of taxes; let him call to mind the artisans, the poorer 
folk, the prostitutes; and he will judge that never was a 
city sacked of which the memory remains, whence greater 
store of treasure could be drawn. Though Rome has at 
other times been taken and pillaged, yet never before was 
it the Rome of our days. Moreover, the sack lasted so 
long that what might not perhaps have been discovered 
on the first day sooner or later came to light. This dis- 
aster was an example to the world that men proud, ava- 
ricious, envious, murderous, lustful, hypocritical, cannot 
long preserve their state. Nor can it be denied that the 
inhabitants of Rome, especially the Romans, were stained 
with all these vices, and with many greater.' 



INDEX 



Abelard, 9. 

Adrian VI., 441. 

Agrippa quoted, 459. 

Ahmed, 589. 

Albigenses, 9. 

Aldi, the, 23. 

Aleander, 27, 

Alexander VI., 406, 407 seq., 603; 

death, 430 (see Papacy). 
Alfonso I. of Naples, 568. 
Alfonso II., 119, 572. 
Allegre, 418. 
Allegretti, works, 292; cited, 165; 

quoted, 616. 
America, effects of its discovery, 

540. 
Ammanati, works, 489. 
Anjou, house of, transfers its claims 

to Sicily, 539. 
Appiani, 148. 
Ariosto, works, 119; cited, 413; 

quoted, 130. 
Aristotle, influence of his writings, 

197; quoted, 234, 235. 
Art in Middle Age, 17 ; effect of 

religious conventionalism, 18 ; 

revolution made by Renaissance, 

18, 19. 

Italian, inimical to ugliness, 
490; 

flourishes under despots, 79. 
Ascham, R., quoted, 472. 

B 

Bacon, Francis, 26; Roger, 9, 10. 

Baglioni, 122, 148. 

Barbiano, 159. 

Bartoli, A., cited, 252. 

Beccadelli, 174. 

Bellini, works, 488. 

Bentivogli, 102, 115, 123. 

Bergamo, V. da, 618. 

Bernard, St., 13. 

Berni cited, 443. 

Bibbiena, 184; quoted, 190. 

Bible, discovery of the original, 20. 



Blood-madness, 109, 589 seq, 

Boccaccio, 11, 20. 

Boiado, 171, 

Bologna, 123, 617. 

Boniface VIII., 76. 

Borgia, Cesare, 117, 324, 345 seq.^ 
426, 577; murders, 352. 

Borgia, Lucrezia, 419; character 
cleared of calumny, 420. 

Borgia, Roderigo (see Alexander 
VI). 

Boscoli, P. P., 466. 

Bracciolini, P., 274. 

Brantome quoted, 117. 

Brescia, 615; Arnold of, 64. 

Browning, R., quoted, 13. 

Bruni, L., 274. 

Buonarotti, 491; works, 19. 

Burchard cited, 430, 431. 

Burckhardt cited, 428; quoted, 434. 

Burton, Robert, cited, 475. 

Bussolaro, J, del, 610. 

Byzantine empire, effect of its fall, 
14. 

C 

Capistrano, G. da, 615. 

Capponi, P., 284, 563. 

Carducci, 284, 289; works, 293. 

Carmagnuola, F., i6r. 

" Carmina Burana," 9. 

Carrara, 149, 

Carroccio, 58. 

Castiglione, works, 183, 457. 

Catholic Church (see Papacy). Suf*- 
port of Church required by good 
society, 455; philosophy and the- 
ology fused, 456; religion di- 
vorced from morality, 462, 493; 
influence of ancient literature, 
464; aestheticism, 465; human- 
ism antagonistic to Christianity, 
493; its corruption, 448 seq.\ not 
universal, 470; immorality of 
priests, 458, 459; superstition, 
466; relics, 461; sanctity of pope, 
462; power of forms, 471; coun- 
ter-reformation, 25 ; power of eo 



640 



INDEX, 



clesiastical eloquenc'e, 491; revi- 
vals, 490, 606 seq. ; indestructa- 
ble vigor of religious faith, 469. 

Cellini, B., 104, 462, 492; me- 
moirs, 325. 

Charles VIII. (see Italy, history), 
540 seq. ; escape, 580. 

Charles of Anjou, 75. 

Charles the Great, 50. 

Chivalry, 483. 

Christianity (see Catholic Church, 
Morals), influence in forming 
modern society, 7; how affected 
by Renaissance, 25. 

Clement VII., 443, 633. 

Colonnesi, 375. 

Columbus, 15. 

Comines cited, 416; quoted, 214, 
475. 541, 553, 572, 578. 

Condottieri, 86, 113, 131, 156 seq.; 
245, 361; character of warfare, 
162, 363. 

Compagni, Dino, chronicle of, 262; 
its authenticity, 266 seq. 

Copernicus, 15. 

Corio, works, 292 ; quoted, 135, 
143, 145, 152, 160, 385, 391, 392, 
619. 

Coryat, T., quoted, 475. 

Croce, della, 614. 

Cromwell, 454. 

Cruelty (see Blood-madness), in- 
stances of, 151, 478, 571; of 
French, 557, 583; its use, 354. 

Crusades, 7. 

D 

Dante, political views, 261 ; works, 
10, II, 73, 260; quoted, 73, 76, 77, 

133. 
Democratic idea, its gradual 

growth, 8. 
Dennistoun cited, 160. 
Descartes, 26, 
Djem, 415, 566, 576. 
Diirer, works, 490; cited, 475. 



Erasmus, 24, 27. 

Este, house of, 395, 420; Nicole, 
168. 



Fanfani, P., cited, 263, 268. 

Feltre, V. da, 171, 176. 

Ferdinand of Arragon, 296, 358; of 

Naples, 570. 
Ferrara, 499, 617; court, 423. 



Ficino, 171, 456. 

Fiesole, G. da, works, 488. 

Filelfo, 171; quoted, 381. 

Flora, Joachim of, 9. 

Florence, its constitution, 195, 201, 
592, 596, 598; number of citizens, 
598; parties, 211; perpetual flux, 
221; government by merchants, 
225; the " parlamento," 230; 
cause of failure of popular gov- 
ernment, 231; population, 256; 
the "arti," 597; militia, its value, 
601; Machiavelli's reforms, 312; 
revenues, 255; topography, 595; 
history (see Italy), rule of the Me- 
dici, 277, 305,629, years 1527-31, 
282 ; recovers liberty through the 
French, 560 ; occupation, 562; 
commonwealth, 282; divisions of 
popular party, 283 ; siege, 285; 
effect of Savonarola's prophecies, 
290; Pazzi conspiracy, 398; final 
subjugation, 446; character of its 
historians, 248 seq., 274. 

Society, character of people, 
600; their enlightenment and im- 
morality, 504 ; absence of reli- 
gious faith, 295; excess of intel- 
lectual mobility, 237; commercial 
character, 238; social life, 242. 
A city of intelligence, 232, 246. 

Fondulo, G., 463. 

Ford, J., cited, 477. 

Foscari, F., 215; quoted, 600. 

Francia, works, 489. 

Fraticelli, 9. 

Frederick I. , 63. 

Frederick II., 10, 68, 105. 

Froben, J., 23. 



Gambacorta, 147. 

Gemistos Plethon, 173. 

Genezzano, 506, 522. 

Genoa, 79; history, 201. 

Giacomini, 313. 

Giannotti cited, 217; quoted, 169, 
196, 216, 238, 278, 280. 

Giotto, works, 488. 

Giovio, quoted, 249. 

God, mediaeval idea of, 16. 

Gonzaghi, 146. 

Government, Guicciardini's theo- 
ries, 305. [See Machiavelli.] 

Graziani quoted, 614. 

Greek, knowledge of, in Renais- 
sance, 182. 



INDEX, 



641 



Greene, R., quoted, 473. 

Gregorovius cited, 421, 430, 479. 

Guarino, 171. 

Guarnieri, 158. 

Guelphs and Ghibellines, 69, 206. 

Guicciardini, 278, 280, 285, 295, 482; 
works, 291, 294, 301 sea.; politi- 
cal theories analyzed, 304 seq.; 
quoted, 44, 91, 92, 119, 169, 223, 
284, 404, 409, 412, 417, 431, 434, 
451, 536, 541, 547, 549, 582, 583, 
603. 

H 

Hawkwood, J., 113. 
Hegel quoted, 367. 
Hegel, C., cited, 252. 
Heribert, 58. 
Hildebrand, 59. 
Hirsch cited, 567. 
Hogarth, works, 490. 
Howell cited, 473. 
Hussites, 9. 
Hutten, 27. 

I 

Infessura, works, 292; cited, 405; 
quoted, 395, 404, 474. 

Innocent VHL, 403. 

Inquisition in Spain, 399. 

Inventions of Renaissance, 29. 

Italy, history (see Condottieri, Pa- 
pacy), its character, 32; papacy 
and empire, 33, 41, 43, 94, 97, 99; 
variety "Of governments, 35, 43; 
their influence on national devel- 
opment, 44; politics, 36; inva- 
sions, 39; want of historical con- 
tinuity, 41; the despotisms, 42; 
origin of modern history, 46; the 
Lombards, 48; Charles the Great, 
51; Berengar, 52; Otho I., 52; 
growth of power of Church, 53; 
Frederick L, 63; Charles of An- 
jou, 75; convulsions of 14th cen- 
tury, 81; states of 15th century, 
88; obstacles to unity, 89; to 
monarchy, 92; to federalism, 
95; in time of Machiavelli, 365; 
policy of Lorenzo, 543; equiHb- 
rium destroyed, 545; French in- 
vasion, 549; character of their 
army, 565; league against them, 
576; cause of their failure, 340; 
effect of their example, 583; on 
other nations, 585; Charles V., 
98. 



Italians incapable of helping 
themselves, 586; responsible for 
their despots, 115; development 
precocious and unsound, 495; fa- 
tal effects of want of union, 538, 
552. 

The Republics, character of 
their history, 33, 193; beginning 
of the power of the cities, 53; 
their origin, 54; count and bish- 
op, 55; "people," 55; commune, 
56; consuls, 56; effect of strug- 
gle of papacy and empire, 61; in- 
fluence of latter, 198; Guelphs and 
Ghibellines, 69, 80, 206; wars of 
cities, 62; Frederic I., 64; strug- 
gle with nobles, 66; the podesta, 
67; "captain of the people," 71; 
the "arti," 72; distinction be- 
tween parties, 74; not represen- 
tative governments, 196; not 
democratic, 195; factions, 198, 
210; small number of active citi- 
zens, 209; temporal character of 
alliances, 212. 

The Despotisms, 42, 76; their 
justification, 83; idea of liberty, 
78; republican freedom unknown, 
91; policy commercial, 85; taxa- 
tion, 86; diplomacy substituted 
for warfare, 87; illegitimacy, 102; 
good government, 103; bad ef- 
fect of their example, 104; courts, 
106, 186; varieties of despotisms, 
109 ; claims of despots due to 
force, not rank, 116; their demo- 
cratic character, 117; uncertainty 
of tenure of power, 117, 129; 
domestic crime, 119 ; murders, 
120 ; tastes and pursuits, 126; 
degeneracy of their houses, 126, 
151; bad effects of rule, 130; 
centralizing tendencies, 13 1 ; 
cruelty, 151; absence of all mor- 
ality, 168. 

Society. Why Italy took the 
lead in the Renaissance, 5; Ital- 
ians gentle and humane, 478; not 
gluttons, 479; personal original- 
ity not discouraged, 488; Italy 
originates type of gentleman, 
192; courtiers, idea of nobility, 
186; community of interest with 
that of Roman Church, 470; im- 
morality not great relatively, 
487; superiority to their contem- 
poraries, 489; purity of their art 



642 



INDEX, 



shows that heart of the people 
was not vitiated, 488; commer- 
cial integrity, 474; demoraliza- 
tion of society, 472; immorality 
came from above, 489; common- 
ness of crime, 170, 480; excep- 
tions to rule, 183; murders, 480; 
deficiency in sense of honor, 
481 ; chastity in women, 486; 
unnatural passions, 477; charms 
of illicit love, 476 ; immoral 
literature, 475. 

Literature, early, 53. 

J 

Jews, expulsion from Spain, 400. 
Julia, daughter of Claudius, 22, 23. 
Julius II., 389, 406, 432 seq. 



Lecce, Roberto da, 614. 
Leo X.,435, 630. 
Libraries of Renaissance, 21. 
Locke, J., 26. 
Lombards, 48 seq. 
London, mediaeval, 137. 
Louis XIL, 339. 
Luini, works, 489. 
Lungo, del, cited, 273. 
Luther, 26, 442, 454, 530. 

M 
Macaulay on the despots, 127, 320, 
Machiavelli,232,278, 308 seq.; prop- 
erty, 309; education, 310; politi- 
cal career, 311; cringing charac- 
ter, 317; intercourse with Cesare 
Borgia, 347; compared with Sa- 
vonarola, 368; last years, 328; 
death, 333. 

Works, 76, 169. 203, 249, 332, 
369, 457, 494 ; military system, 
312; Art of War, 328 ; History, 
331; The Prince, 319 ; object in 
writing it, 321; appeal to the 
Medici, 366; apology for the au- 
thor, 367; morality of the work, 
324-6; author's sincerity, 333 ; 
not the inventor of Machiavellian- 
ism, 335; it assumes separation of 
statecraft and morality, 335; an 
abstract of political expediency, 
336; how permanently to assimi- 
late provinces, 338; colonies, 338; 
founders of monarchies, 343 ; 
distinction between monarch and 
despot, 341; use of cruelty, 354; 



value of distrust, 358; military 
precautions, 360; the work con- 
demned by the Inquisition, 336; 
opinion of it in France, 326; 
quoted, 45, 82, 84, 96, 98, 115, 
116, 146, 152, 187, 202, 214, 215, 
245, 325, 447, 450, 453, 460. 

Madonna, conventional idea of, 18. 

Malatesta, 172, 

Malespini, chronicle, 251. 

Mantegna, works, 489. 

Mantuanus, B., quoted, 394. 

Marlowe quoted, 336. 

Marston, cited, 473, 475. 

Massa, B. da, 611. 

Masuccio quoted, 458, 486. 

Matarazzo, works, 292; quoted, 583. 

Medici, their policy, 87, 90, 128, 
155, 228, 230; expulsion, 222; 
connection with papacy, 404; ser- 
vices to literature, 600. 

Alessandro, 298; Cosimo, 300, 
492; Lorenzo, 504, 628; death, 
523; Piero, 558. 

Michelet quoted, 15, 585. 

Middle Age: mental condition, 6, 
13; inaccessibility to mental ideas, 
7; political character, 8; art, 17; 
scholarship, 20. 

Milan, 58; Visconti and Sforza, 154. 

Milman quoted, 530. 

Milton, 454. 

Mirandola, 171, 456, 520; quoted, 
401, 511. 

Monaldeschi, L. B., 252. 

Montferrat, 146. 

Montone, B. da, 123, 159, 

Morals (see Italy, society; Papacy, 
court; Virtu ;) in Cellini's me- 
moirs, 325 ; sexual immorality, 474; 
tyrannicide defended, 468. 

Miintz, E., cited, 384. 

Muzio quoted, 174. 

N 
Naples (see Italy), attraction for 

foreigners, 566; claims of house 

of Anjou, 539; flight of king, 574. 
Nardi, 278, 280, 290; works, 291; 

quoted, 292, 511, 534, 592. 
Nerli, 278, 290; works, 293 seq.\ 

quoted, 328. 
Nicholas V., 378. 
Norrnans in Italy, 58. 



Olgiati, 166. 



( 



INDEX. 



643 



Orsini, 375, 
Otho I., 52. 



Pamponazzo, 456. 
Pandolfini, 239; works, 241. 
Papacy (see Catholic Church), " the 
ghost of the Roman empire," 6; 
church and state, 8; Charles the 
Great, 51 ; imperial nominees, 
59; change in mode of election, 
60; effect of crushing the Hohen- 
stauffen, loi ; nepotism, 114; 
authority in 14th century, 371, 
375 ; secularization, 371, 375 ; 
temporal power, 376 ; its con- 
solidation, 378; its extent, 434; 
persecution, 402; of Platonists, 
417; its effect, 418; plan to trans- 
form Papacy to kingdom, 392; 
sale of pardons, 404, 439 ; no 
horror felt at election of Alexan- 
der VI., 410; Turks invited to 
Italy, 415, 551; censure of press, 
416: alliance with France, 427, 
566; political crimes of Alexan- 
der VI., 428 ; tide turns with 
Julius II., 433 ; reforms of 
Adrian VI., 441; moral advan- 
tage of sack of Rome, 445. 

Court, 372; its scandalous his- 
tory, 390, 403, 411, 414, 420, 424, 
439. 457 ; extravagance, 390, 
436, 437; extortion, 437; mon- 
opolies, 394; nepotism, 419, 438; 
simony, 394, 405, 414; art patron- 
age, 384, 401,433,436. 

Paterini, 9. 

Paul II., 383. 

Pazzi conspiracy, 396. 

Perrotti quoted, 179. 

Perugia, 612. 

Pescara, marquis of, 634. 

Petrarch, 11, 20; quoted, 250. 

Piccolomini (see Pius II.). 

Pisa, 342, 560. 

Pitti, 278, 280; works, 291. 

Pius II., 380. 

Poggio quoted, 187. 

Poliziano, 171. 

Pontano cited, 481. 

Printers of Renaissance, 23. 

Provence, civilization of, 9. 

Puritanism, 25, 27. 

R. 

Raffaella quoted, 485. 



Raphael, works, 488. 

Reformation, 433; how affected by 
Renaissance, 27. 

Rembrandt, works, 490. 

Renaissance (see Middle Age), not 
synonymous with "revival of 
learning," i; not completed, 2; 
extent of signification, 2-3; ori- 
gin, 4; idea not separable from 
" Reformation," " Revolution," 
5; effect on old beliefs, 14, 16; 
all its tendencies worldly, 455; 
restores double past. Christian 
and pagan, 506; obstacles in the 
way, 5; preparation, 9; opposi- 
tion of the Church, 10; character 
of the men, 12; discoveries, 15; 
scholarship, 20; assimilation of 
paganism, 25; reaction against 
enlightenment, 25; inventions, 
29. 

Reuchlin, 27. 

Reumont, A. von, cited, 212, 524. 

Ripamonti quoted, 163, 167. 

Robbia, works, 489. 

Romagna, 349. 

Romano, Ezzelino da, 69, 75, 106, 
119; Giulio, works, 490. 

Rome (see Italy, Papacy), effect of 
its ruins, 253; appearance at time 
of French occupation, 564; early 
mediaeval history, 47; opposition 
to Lombards, 49 ; government 
semi-independent of pope, 376; 
advantages derived from pres- 
ence of papal court, 377 ; im- 
provements under Nicholas V., 
378, impunity of criminals, 405; 
factions destroyed, 413; rising of 
Colonnas, 443 ; sack, 444, 636 ; 
prostitutes, 474. 

Romeo and Juliet, 74. 

Rosellini, works, 489. 

Rosenbaum cited, 567. 

Rovere, F. della (see Sixtus IV.); 
Francesco Maria, 393; Giuliano 
(see Julius II,); Pietro, 390. 

Rubens, works, 490. 



Sadoleto, quoted, 446. 

Savelli, 375. 

Savonarola, 202, 222, 230, 277, 283, 
290, 345, 368, 453, 454, 456, 491, 
498 seq., 561, 622; poems, 502; 
settles in Florence, 504 ; por- 
traits, 508; eloquence, 510; 



644 



INDEX. 



creed, 513 ; ' prophe'cies, 514 ; 
political career, 526 ; hatred of 
secular culture, 527 ; dares not 
break with Rome, 531; martyr- 
dom, 533; works, 536; quoted, 
128. 

Savoy, 146. 

Scala, della, family, 145, 258. 

Scheffer-Boichorst cited, 252, 269. 

Segni, 278, 280, 289; works, 292 seq. 

Sforza family, 131 seq.; their mag- 
nificence, 164; to be made kings 
of Lombardy, 392 ; Francesco, 
153, 159 seq., 345; Galeazzo, 165; 
Ludovico, 543 seq. 

Shelley cited, 477. 

Siena, 207, 616. 

Sismondi quoted, 138, 144, 159, 
226, 538. 

Sixtus IV., 388 seq., 502. 

Soderini, P., 289, 324. 

Spaniards, cruelty of, 478. 

Spinoza, 26. 

Stendhal cited, 482. 

Stephani, the, 23. 

Strozzi, Ercole, 423; F., 285. 

Swiss, 450. 

Syphilis, history of, 567. 



Tasso, 486. 

Temporal Power (see Papacy). 

Tenda, Beatrice di, 152. 

Theodoric, 47. 

Theology, effect of Renaissance 

upon, 16. 
Tiraboschi, quoted, 173. 
Titian, works, 19 



Torre, della, 132. 

Trinci, 122. 

U 

Urbino, dukes of, 174 seq., 393, 438. 
V 

Valois, Charles of, 76, 

Varani, 121. 

Varchi, 278, 290; works, 279, 293 
seq.\ quoted, 204, 244, 595. 

Venice, 79, 88, 91; an exception 
among the republics, 195, 214 
constitution, 215; the Ten, 218 
fascination exercised by govern 
ment, 220 ; military system, 220 
no initiative among citizens, 233 
compared with Sparta, 234; in 
difference to prosperity of Italy 
550. 

Vespasiano quoted, 174., 477, 612. 

Vettori, F., 624; works, 626. 

Vicenza, John of, 607. 

Villani, M., works, 251 seq., quoted, 
128, 139. 

Villari, quoted, 195, 500, 

Vinci, da, 326, 548; works, 489. 

Virgil, 20. 

Virtu, 17T, 337, 345, 484, 493- 

Visconti, family, 131 seq. ; their 
realm falls to pieces, 150; FiHp- 
po, 152: Gisa, 141; Violante, 137. 

W 

Webster, J., quoted, 119, 557. 
Witchcraft persecutions, 402. 

Y 

Yriarte, quoted, 210, 217. 



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